My heart has felt very heavy over the last month or so.
I am not sure why. I am certainly 'over' the passing of my dad. It's been over two and a half years, and I still get a pang - a sharp heavy pang - when I get a piece of mail addressed to him. My mother and all my grandparents have been gone for quite a while. Luckily, there have not been any deaths of my generation or the next one - not from lack of trying (none recently, thank God) in both of these generations.
Mostly, I think, from missing my maternal grandmother - and this year, her birthday fell on Mother's Day. That was always special. A special Special Day for a special woman. Even though I did not realize how special she was, and how good she was to her grandchildren, until I was an adult with my own life, family, house, etc., etc. Just knowing those two days fall together makes my heart swell with love for her.
With Spring actually being Spring this year, it makes everything a little different, also. You can dress for cool temperatures and rain when you get up in the morning, but by evening, you have melted from the sunshine and then slid home on ice. Ahhhh, Spring in the Ohio Valley. Don't like the weather? Wait a bit - it WILL change.
So, with these uncertainties on top of knowing what special days were coming up - not just Mother's Day/Mamma's birthday, but also our 36th anniversary just a couple of days later, my heart just did not know whether to be happy or sad. Add to that mix all the strange happenings in my own life this year - losing my job, having a heart attack, getting a 'seasonal' job that only lasted 8 days and the wreck it made of my health, dealing with the financial difficulties that losing a job brings, planning a family vacation, re-learning how to not go to work, and so forth - and I think my poor old heart is just plain old confused.
So, I have chosen to dwell on the happy occurrences and let the sadder aspects go. They are over with, and I can't change them, so they are history! Ta-da!
Until today, anyway.
Today I have failed myself and my youngest sister, as well as other people. I don't think I will be able to forget this for quite a while.
I got a text today, asking me to call my dad's girlfriend (ladyfriend?) because she wants to know where he is. O M G. I absolutely froze. I texted back, no. NO. I can't do it. And thus started a text conversation about why can't I? and I just can't answer that. Here I am, thinking that she has Alzheimer's or dementia or something and just can't find him. And I am frozen - there is no way in Hell that I can just tell her that he is dead. I just can't!!!! Many texts later, I come to the conclusion that she wants to know where he is - as in Where is he buried? and I feel a little better, but still ashamed of my cowardly ways.
The reason she didn't know where he is buried is that he had donated his body to science, and when the UC College of Medicine was 'done' with him, they buried him with other donors. I can't remember the name of the place - Silver Grove? Sacred Heart? I have to look up the letter from UC College of Medicine when I get home (I was running errands as all this happened) and it is Spring Grove Cemetery. They don't give the address, but I am pretty sure it is on Montgomery Road. It is a H U G E cemetery. He is in the 'donor' section
I am so mad at myself. I am very thankful that my "fragile" (she is one of the aforementioned this generation) baby sister could handle this much better than I could, but there was no reason to put her through it.
My heart is heavy. My mind, my thoughts, my brain are all blazing, railing at me, inside my head. I AM a failure and this fact is drummed into me once again.
How do I get over this? Step by step, minute by minute, day by day, etc. The happy times/happenings/events will eventually push this away, and until then, I must live with it. I think I'll go bake something.
This reminds me of the guy who was rear-ended on his way to work and ended up spinning across 125 and ending up in the ditch. He was uninjured, and so was the driver who hit him. The cars weren't even damaged, but this guy called his mother, who lives near the accident scene, to come up there.
ReplyDeleteThere was no reason for her to be there, but this guy was a little freaked out and needed someone he knew to be there (not that he admitted this was the reason he called her). He had been realizing that if there were traffic coming from the opposite reaction, he would have hit it head-on at 60MPH.
So his mother came and unknowingly gave him comfort. After everything was settled with the police, his car was driven out of the ditch and it was time for everyone to go about their business, he got back in his car, and his mother had to cross a 4-lane highway during morning commute.
She started across, and saw a semi coming, so she would have to hurry. But she started walking too fast for her legs, weakened by a TIA. She fell. On the highway. In front of the truck.
The guy didn't know why the semi locked up its wheels and all traffic slammed to a stop, and looked back. He hadn't SEEN any of this. He saw the Highway Patrolman rushing out into the street at a body on the pavement. He got out to help. He knew the truck did not hit his mother, and actually thought that she had another stroke or something on the way back to her car.
But she was ok, she just fell. In front of a truck moving at highway speed. The guy and the cop helped her up and to her car, and waved traffic on. The cop said to the guy, "Whew. That could have been bad."
No, the truck did not hit her. She was ok. But the guy realized that because of his own selfishness, his own need of comfort for no real reason, he had almost caused his mother to die. And he wouldn't even have seen. Not that he would have WANTED to see that happen, but I mean he was back in his own little world. He gotten what he needed and was (for lack of a better term) done with his mother.
People kept telling him not to be hard on himself - nothing really happened, everything was ok, etc. But he still can't get over the fact that she did not need to be there in the first place. The only reason she was there was because he called her.
I offer the same advice: don't be hard on yourself for things that are out of your control. I know by experience that it is impractical (maybe even impracticable) advice, but there it is:
Do not blame yourself for things which you can not control.
:)
I am a crying fool.
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