This week, my whole family came down with the flu. We had flu shots, but the b strain got us. It was a long week, but we all recovered. Everything has been wiped down with bleach or washed. We’re all ready, I think, to return to the world.

For a few days, my son, my partner, and my dog all curled up with me. Everyone felt bad, but I was so grateful to have time with them. The weird gift of the flu was we had time together, albeit while we were ill.

It says something about how crazy things have been that the flu had an upside.

My aunt died on Dec 26th, and since then, every waking moment that wasn’t work has been dealing with her estate. She hadn’t planned on dying, and things weren’t organized as well as she would have liked. I know this because she apologized for that while she was dying. It isn’t bad, but it takes time.

I had to fly to Nashville to close a bank account. I was lucky to have a colleague who generously invited me for a wonderful visit at Vanderbilt, so I was able to do something positive while I was there. I’ve been on the phone more times than I want to count with people who never return my calls about her retirement and about assessing her things. I need to know what will or won’t go to the estate to file estate taxes. I’m lucky that I found a realtor I trust to help get her home ready to sell, but it still takes time to go through her papers, her letters, her photos. The latter two are stored away, but it still took time to figure out what they were, and in some cases, return the letters to her friends who wrote them who have at least a small thing to help remember.

Since December, much of the limited time I would spend with my son and partner haven’t happened. I’ve been paying bills, figuring out tax documents, and trying somewhere in between to keep my head above water at work. There are grants that didn’t get written in all of this. I wonder how I can catch back up.

Then the flu struck, and we were all curled up, sick, but together. We watched Scooby doo. I was really worried about everyone, but at least we were together. That’s the thing. It took the flu to get us to all stop, to get me to stop, and for us to have time together. I need to figure out how to find time when we’re all feeling better to curl up.