The Moving Van's On Its Way To Santa Barbara

We pretty much got Chaya out of her apartment. (Chaya is what I've decided to call my-friend-who-was-recently-widowed on the blog, it's not her name, and she's not Jewish, but it's a play on her real name, and easier than referring to her by long descriptors.)

Luckily, the apartment was teeny, and they did not have a whole lot of furniture. Not so luckily:

1. Chaya is an artist who makes jewelry and things out of found objects primarily. Her husband was a painter and did turntable work, and computer graphics. As a result, they have lots of materials, all of which needed to be relocated.

2. We had about a dozen canvases of various sizes done by Chaya's husband, which needed to be packed with utmost care. (The rest are being stored with his sister.)

3. Chaya had been unable to get any sleep the night before, and was running primarily on nervous energy.

4. Most of her friends couldn't make it until the afternoon, seeing as it was a work day. We began with just me and her mother, and another friend who didn't have to be at work. This young man was working hard, but when it came to moving the furniture, he had as a choice of helpers a woman in her sixties, a woman who is five-feet-two and hadn't had any sleep, or the Balabusta who is a klutz.

Luckily, Chaya began making desperate calls on her cell phone, and a couple of twentyish boys showed up for an hour and a half. One of them was an ex-coworker of hers, and the other was the friend he'd been hanging out with, who had volunteered to come along and help. They schlepped the furniture upstairs, dismantled the TV and stereo pieces and boxed them, and then schlepped those. I commented quietly that God really knew what she was doing when she created men, although we may sometimes doubt it.

After that, we made good progress, and I took off when people began to get off work and arrive to take care of the aftermath. Someone was recruited to take Chaya to Whole Foods and get some nutrition into her.

She's moving in with her sister, who is expecting a baby in October--she's going to take classes at the city college, and help with the baby, and see what she wants to do next. I think it's a good plan. Apparently there's all kinds of mishegoss with the hospital and etc., because her husband did not have insurance. She's hoping to get that cleared up in the next month, before she goes to Santa Barbara herself--she's staying with friends for a while.

It was nice to spend time with her, and to be able to do something to help, even if it wasn't very much. The wake some weeks ago was beautiful, but everyone was still very shaky. I spent a lot of time patting Chaya's sister's (let's call her Drora--another little joke there) bump and hearing about the pregnancy.

Chaya keeps talking about what a wreck she is, but she actually is dealing with everything with amazing strength and grace. Apparently some people have been implying to her that she should be over the breaking-down-crying phase--who these people are, I'm not sure, and I definately don't want to meet them. It hasn't been six weeks yet.

This is just such a stupid, terrible thing to happen.