ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 10, 1996 TAG: 9610100006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO BETH MACY
DATELINE: COPPER HILL
Outside the roads are wet and foggy, the kind of weather folks around here call ``being in the clouds.''
Inside Tim Austin's living room, the tropical-fish aquarium gurgles, punctuating the steady ping of rain on the tin roof of his 1885 farmhouse.
The dreamy sounds are interrupted by the ring of the telephone. Finally. The 30-year-old electrician has taken off work specifically for this call, from a Social Security Administration clerk, in hopes of laying the matter to rest.
Sitting at his dining room table, next to an old wood stove, Tim fidgets with the nightmare of file folders he's been shuffling ever since his wife died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on Aug. 31.
At the age of 29.
Leaving him to raise their 3-year-old daughter and 2-month-old son.
Tim listens calmly, intently, to the clerk on the phone. For four minutes, he says nothing except, ``OK ... OK ... OK ... OK ... OK ... OK ...
``Thank you.''
And then he hangs up.
The news: He'll receive a one-time payment of $255 in death benefits, and the rough equivalent, in monthly payments, of $1,000 a year. ``That's all you get for losing your spouse,'' he says. His voice reflects more worry than bitterness.
Theresa Ann Austin earned $19,000 a year as a legal secretary for Greenberg and Associates, a Roanoke law firm. She was the primary breadwinner in the family.
She was also the primary diaper-changer, grocery-shopper, midnight-formula-feeder, bill-payer, runny-nose-wiper and Christmas shopper.
Every morning, she dropped the kids off at the baby sitter and preschool on her way to work. Every evening, she made supper and got them ready for bed.
``Basically,'' Tim says, looking down, ``she was the one.''
Tim had the foresight to discuss the unthinkable with his wife - funeral details, burial wishes, how the kids should be raised, how to pay for the kids' college educations. ``I tried to bring it up with her,'' he recalls. ``But she'd just joke and tell me, `Oh Tim, you're so morbid. Shut up.'''
He doesn't regret not forcing his wife to talk about death.
What he does regret: Never taking her to a cave or to Busch Gardens (two things she'd always wanted to do), not having a family photo made after their youngest child was born.
And most of all, Saturday mornings. ``The kids would get up at 5 a.m., and she'd get up with them and let me sleep late,'' he recalls.
One Saturday morning not along before her death, Terri asked him, ``When am I gonna get my chance for a break?''
Tim told her, ``Next weekend, honey,'' and went back to sleep.
He wishes now he'd done more with the children - not so he'd be better equipped to handle their wants and needs in her absence. ``But for Terri's sake.''
Tim has been a single parent now for six weeks. He's had help adjusting to the new demands: His sister from Richmond moved in for two weeks to help out with the kids. An accountant relative went through the bank statements, helping him sort out the bills.
His mom and sister showed him how to match his daughter's clothes. A relative hired a housekeeper to come in weekly.
Tim's employer, Fischer Electrical Constructions, gave him time to adjust to his new duties and schedule. A neighbor lady comes by every so often with loads of formula, Pampers and groceries.
``I've been to the store twice so far,'' Tim says, shaking his head. ``Terri could do it for one week, spend $84 and come out raising hell about how much it cost. Me, I'm lucky if I can get out for less than $120.''
He's tapped patience reserves he didn't know he had. That's been his biggest surprise - and salvation.
Three-year-old Ashley, acting out for attention, recently smeared diaper-rash cream all over the new carpet in her brother's bedroom. Tim didn't flinch.
She wakes up regularly in the middle of night, complaining of nightmares and missing her mom. Tim lets her crawl into his bed.
He was always good about working on the house - refinishing the wood floors, chopping firewood, remodeling the upstairs - "but I was pretty short-tempered with the children,'' he says. ``Now I'm patient with the kids, and I don't know where it's coming from.''
When Ashley asks where her mommy is, he tells her: ``She's gone to walk with Jesus and sing with the angels.''
``But who will take me to school and fix my supper?'' the girl wants to know.
``It's just you and me and Jacob now, and I will help you with all of it,'' Tim says.
``I have to keep going over it and over it with her.''
He's become a firm believer in the saying: God never puts more on you than you can handle.
Sometimes late at night, Tim lumbers out of bed, wanders down to the living room and stares at the aquarium full of exotic fish his wife bought, fed and nurtured. He had to phone a tropical-fish expert to find out how to take care of Terri's beloved fish - yet another test in his crash course on motherhood.
``Three of them died the weekend she died, and there's one right now I'm not sure is going to make it,'' he says.
Still, he likes to watch them in the dark - the iridescent blues and greens shimmering, the air bubbles ascending and swirling.
``At first I thought, `What am I going to do with these?' But now I find it soothing.''
It helps him grieve for his wife. It helps him imagine her in a cave, on a roller coaster, in a family photo - and in the dreamy world of Saturday morning sleep.
Contributions may be made to the Austin Children Educational Fund, P.O. Box 240, Roanoke, Va. 24002.
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Family photo. Tim and Terri Austin are shown here lastby CNBChristmas with their daughter Ashley, 3. The Austins never got
around to having a family snapshot taken with their youngest child,
Jacob, who was 2 months old when his mom died Aug. 31. color.