Death

So Much For It All

Damned if I stay. And damned if I go.

Feeling the calm after my morning break-down. Feeling that cold, emotionally-drained, numb sort of resignation.

Canceled my attendance in the grief group therapy program. I’m just not ready.

Or maybe I am, just not in that format.

Giving up.

No, not on physical existence. I had my chance to leave with Cancer and I passed it up. Had to go and get all “Up With Life!” back then. What the fuck was I thinking?? It would have been the perfect way to bow out of this place gracefully! And now I recognize that I am stuck. Because if I choose to leave, that would not be fair to the ones I love. Not that I believe that I’m doing them any good, mind you. Au Contraire! I think my absence could actually do them some good. It’s just that permanently leaving would cause more drama and damage and they don’t need that. At all.

People often say “Just let it go!”, or “Let go, let God!”…and they’re right. I need to let go…. But my problem is how. How to do it in a way that would cause the least harm.

All I can come up with is to emotionally and mentally check out; if not some temporary physical removal of some sort. Like, go live somewhere else. If only money weren’t such a huge obstacle… But then, if I did, I’d still have to live with me. No matter where you go, there you are. And I’d feel guilty for leaving them with all the housework and pet care and chores. Yeah. Because that’s apparently all I can do; and even there, I’m no Martha Stewart.


Checking out emotionally and mentally would help with the resignation to letting go; to letting go of the notion that I can help my kids in any way, to the notion that anything I say or do benefits them, to the notion that I add much value to the world; to the resignation of my Sisyphean lot of cleaning and laundering and driving and grocery shopping and scheduling (because I was unfortunately too messed up to create any sort of career when I had youth on my side)… To the resignation that not much that I do matters. Not in the grand scheme of things. My father’s death, I’m realizing, reinforced this feeling I’ve had most of my life. And in some ways, that’s okay; that’s a bit freeing. But also, that sort of takes any sense of purpose away as well.

The problem is definitely, undeniably, indubitably, me.

Actually, I take that back. This world is pretty fucked up. So, it’s not ALL my fault. There are some real and truly hypocritical, ignorant, mean, greedy, selfish, egotistical, unprincipled, bigoted, violent, unthinking, uncaring stupid assholes out there. And the world is brutal; just the way it’s designed is pretty cruel! Nasty, brutish and short. It’s true. But I’m wholly ineffective and inept and shit at helping my family cope with it all, and that has been the one job I’ve had to do for the last 22 years. And I managed to mess it up. Because I’ve never really been good at coping with it myself…with this existence.

Because I care too much, I worry too much, I talk too much, I think too much, I feel too much, I want too much… It’s all too much. I’m too much. And not enough.

A mother’s lament…..

10/22/2020

Yesterday, September 28th, 2023, at 12:30 p.m., via Zoom, I attended my first ever group grief counseling meeting. We had to introduce ourselves and give one word to the way we were feeling at the moment. My word was “Okay”. (I was, in fact, feeling okay. I had just left a nice get-together with some new friends over coffee). At the end of the meeting, we were asked again for one word to describe how we were feeling in the moment, now that we had all met and shared our reasons for being there. I couldn’t find one that was truly appropriate. The closest I could come up with was “scared”.

I think that “apprehensive” might actually be a better, more nuanced, description though. Then again, it could be just a synonym for “scared”. (It is. I looked it up)

I chose it because suddenly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to open up and talk about my father’s death. Like, the nitty, gritty details of how I felt back then and how it has continued to affect me. I thought that I was ready. I know that I really need to for my mental health; in order to deal with the rest of my life. Because I do know that when you don’t address something emotional, it does not evaporate. It festers and becomes rancid, sour, turns your insides to goo which eventually leak out at inopportune times. Or, it can become hardened like an abnormally massive kidney stone, that if not removed will make your life extremely painful and difficult. It will block you.

I think that’s where I am. Where I’ve been for three years. Blocked. And I know it. And my kidney stone of grief isn’t going to be able to be removed with a nice little anesthetized surgery. No. I’m gonna have to pass it on my own. And this grief group is gonna have to hold my hand while I do it. And I’m gonna have to hold theirs. And it’s gonna hurt like a bitch. And that’s why I ended the meeting feeling, not a tad bit better as others seemed to, but a tad bit worse. Because I know that it’s going to be really painful and I’ve been avoiding it.

Like I’ve been avoiding this blog. And like I’ve avoided listening to all the recorded conversations I’d had with my dad. (Because we knew he was dying and I wanted to keep all the stories he had to tell me alive and I wanted to keep his voice nearby, I recorded some of our conversations. I knew talking to him and listening to him was going to be the thing I missed the most). And like I’ve avoided writing. Because it felt like when he died, my words died with him. And I’m still avoiding those hours of recordings.

But today, here I am. Because yesterday I was “scared”. And it’s because I’ve said I’m going to face my grief. Which has lead me this morning to this draft I’d saved, has lead me to what I was writing on October 22, 2020, at my parent’s house. I got freaked out and didn’t finish it because my dad called to me from the hospice bed where he was stationed, where he was living, where he was dying, in the front room of their house.
I’d freaked out because he had started, as a lot of dying people do, to seeing people who were not there, and to somehow be able to know about stuff going on in other parts of the house, even though he was bedridden. I suddenly wondered if he was able to see what I was trying to get out of my system and into writing. And I didn’t want him to know, because all of us were in horrid emotional turmoil.

And this is what I didn’t want him to know…

It had been three days. For three days, I had been at my parent’s house, listening to my father moan and groan and yelp out – in discomfort, not pain! he insisted. He insists it isn’t pain because he knows that then my mom and I would badger him to take pain medication.

(He has an extreme aversion to pain medication for some reason. Something that I remember my late mother-in-law also had. It makes me wonder if there’s some sort of generational thing about pills. Some sort of distrust of modern medicine. Some sort of character association with people who take pills….like, weakness or something…or a fear of getting addicted?…Though, in my dad’s case, when you’re dying, what does addiction matter anymore?)

Three days looking at his emaciated face. He’s always been a thin man in normal times. Now he looks, in his own words, correctly, like someone from a concentration camp; ravaged by this cancer that has no potential for cure. He’s already bought as much extra time as he could with the chemotherapy (something that we managed to talk him into, surprisingly…) Now it’s sheer stubbornness and orneriness and will that is keeping him going.

And, I suspect, a love of life that he wouldn’t admit to.
And, a love of my mother and myself and his grandchildren that he would.
And, perhaps, a bit of fear about what’s next.

Three days listening to him complain about various things that hurt, but refusing anything that might help – medicine, shifting him on the couch that he’d been living on for … God, feels like years now….
Three days listening to him coughing up phlegm every 10 or 15 minutes. Handing him a plastic bag to spit into and then tissue to clean up his lips and his beard (which had grown in since he quit shaving – and didn’t trust anyone to shave for him – ever the perfectionist; in his mind, if you’re going to do something right, you have to do it….well, if not your own way, then his…)
Three days of the sounds of a tortured animal coming from my dad.
Something that would distress him terribly if he were the one hearing it, whether from an animal or one of us. He wouldn’t be able to tolerate it.
“Just let me make my noise!” he kept saying, adamant that it helped him with the pain. Because damn those pain pills!
Three days of taking shifts with my mom – keeping him company and catering to his needs – she, during the day, and me, at night.
Three nights of sleep – and daytime naps, too – interrupted constantly because he’s been a night owl for as long as I can remember. Normally, I’m a night owl too, but when stressed out, I tend to want to just sleep.
But mom sleeps pretty soundly, she’s always been a morning lark, and her hearing isn’t too good, and she needs her rest.

Yes. He’s stubborn and ornery. He isn’t the best patient. We still love him, no matter how frustrating he gets.

But three days of this and it was time for me to return briefly to my own home to check on my husband and my son and our house. Our own House of Stress: Husband out of work, fighting his own depression; teenage son, also depressed, struggling in school and starting to self-harm….
This year has been the worst out of already too many years of awfulness…

I’d been calm. (Thank you, Lexapro!) Until I couldn’t find the coffee pot.

I’ve left it unfinished all this time. Because my words died with him. Because I couldn’t go back to the details of the last days. Of what I witnessed. Of what my mother and myself witnessed. Of what torture it was. For all of us.

And I know I need to deal with it. To make some sense of it. Because the stress and the grief has not let up, not one iota. I’ve always experienced existential angst. My father’s death made it a tangible, solidified, objective matter.

What happened with the coffee pot? I can’t remember now.







I’m Baaa-aaack….(or am I?)

Well, it does seem that I’m back to being “yappity”, anyway. We shall see.

Finally received an official diagnosis of ADHD and finally started medication for it. And it is making me weirdly social again. It is making me a bit like I was after surviving breast cancer. I was uncharacteristically hopeful and optimistic and forgiving and motivated and extroverted and chatty after all that….During all that, actually.

And then Life carried on… and, well, kinda took the shine off that survival high for a good 6 years or so and sent me reeling back to an old familiar state of being; as is occasionally documented in previous, cringe-y, but authentic, posts which, if I were anyone else, I would probably delete out of merited embarrassment. But I can’t deny who I am: Too honest, too earnest, too talkative, too wordy, too neurotic, too open, too sensitive, messy, emotional, curious, real, maybe shameless. Human.

Also? Probably worthy of the label of Alcoholic. Avoiding the stuff now – mainly because of my new meds.

I think that there’s more to being back though. As mentioned, it definitely has something to do with this new prescription added to my anti-depressant (which sorta broke down and was like, “Nope! Gonna need some help here!”) but I think it also has a lot to do with the unexpected death of someone, a friend, whom I considered one of my favorite people on this planet.

She and I met in college on a study abroad program. We became fast friends. We may have been opposite in so many ways, but we clicked. Mainly because she was one of those people who just hummed with brightness; she touched so many people with her warmth and kindness and energy. I was very lucky to have met her. She was in my wedding party (in fact, she was the reason I even met my husband) and I was in hers. Marriage and jobs and homes and kids came along and drew us away for periods of time, but we always circled back to touch base and check in on each other. And when we did, it was like no time had passed at all. We were the same together again as we were before. I am damn lucky to have a handful or two of friends like that. And her death has just thrown those relationships into stark focus. I’m still in disbelief and it’s been almost a month since she’s been gone. We had said we would get together soon several months ago. Another mutual friend had arranged to see her this past July. She backed out because she wasn’t feeling well – just two weeks before she passed.

I think that even more than when I had the possibility of dying in front of me roughly 11 years ago, my friend’s death has driven home to me the urgency of the time we have left for us on Earth. I know that sounds weird coming from someone who has gone through cancer treatment, from someone who has wrestled mightily with suicide-ideation for years, from someone whose husband not very long ago, attempted his own departure from this life, from someone who has lost a mother-in-law, from someone who has lost a father who was also a best friend, from deaths of other very dear ones… I’m not unfamiliar with loss.

Grief, I am discovering, is a weird thing though.

Those previous deaths, those close-calls with death….are events that I’ve managed to compartmentalize somehow. I think that I’ve put them into a room in my head, closed the door and chosen to examine them later. Every time I peek inside that room, I have to slam it shut. Especially my father’s death. ESPECIALLY that one. (Yes, I need to deal. I’ve signed up for a grief-counseling group, thank you). Probably I’ve done it because those events come with particularly tender to the touch, awful, memories. That’s not to say that my friend’s death isn’t painful. It most definitely is. But I think because of who she was and how she was and what she believed in, the suddenness of it is still so surreal, the fact that she died peacefully at least, surrounded by those she loved the most, at home and relaxing….everyone unaware of what was about to happen…. makes it somewhat gentler to reflect upon. And it makes it easier to keep her spirit with me.

And so, it is making me reflect upon the people in my life, the relationships I’ve had, human existence and its uncertainties, friendships and their impact. But most of all: Time. How to be in it and how to use it. Who to spend it with. How unpredictable it is.


I feel like I have her to thank for this awakening. Typical of her. That incredibly real positive open petite fun giggly honest caring bright earnest sweet energetic giving compassionate forgiving gracious authentic thoughtful soul. May her memory be a blessing. And may it keep me awake.