Despondency

Grief is a funny thing. It creeps up on you at the strangest times, and just when you think you're done...you're not. Some say you will never be done...others say it does happen, somewhere along the way. I once read a perfect analogy on this:

Imagine a really big pile of rice. I can't say how big it is, maybe even you can't...but it's big. Slowly, one by one, you will have to pick up every single grain and move it to somewhere else. There is no fast way to do this. You don't get a shovel. You don't even get to use handfuls. Just one grain at a time. Every memory, every thought, every shared experience, every dream about the future. One by one by one. Some days you'll turn away from the pile and ignore it for a while. That's ok. Some time...next month, next year,...who knows when, you'll realize that the pile is a little smaller. Some times the grains of rice will demand to be moved when you least expect them. Some memory in the grocery store or gas station. Some day in the future, you'll have moved it all and realize you are done.

I think back to the night my mom died, and how I felt like I would never be 'ok' again. I remember saying it to my friend in Wisconsin later on, before I crumpled to the floor and stayed there for a few days. That was more than two years ago. Am I ok? Some days.

As I type, my father (d/b/a sperm donor of choice) is dying in a hospital somewhere two states away of a horrible, painful, debilitating disease of his own creation following more than 30 years of hard drinking. He has been through 5 different hospitals and been getting his most recent care at an aptly named rehab facility, a place where no one is expected to rehabilitate, or at least, not him. I spent the first month of his rapidly declining illness on the phone with doctors, with family members, with anyone I could talk to about his treatment, prognosis, and spoke to him every day, catering to his demands for toothbrushes, newspapers, and 7am calls that the nurses' weren't answering his pages and he needed to go to the bathroom again. I made myself sick with stress and worry, and anxiety. I got on a train. I did everything a dutiful daughter is supposed to do in times such as these for a father who couldn't have given a shit less. I played the game.

When I had my surgery, I took a week off. And when I didn't hear anything from him for that week until he needed something yet again, I got angry. I stuck my head in the sand, pretended he didn't exist, and quietly managed the lexicon of administrative bullshit behind the scenes, getting news from my cousin now and again.

Today, that gurgling of stress that begins as a pit in my stomach, and has nothing to do with surgical bands is rising again as I make distressed phone calls to ER's, yelling at asinine nurses about the HIPA law and proxy codes, and POA's to banking directors and wail to myself at the idea of going through all of this ALL OVER AGAIN.

But when I pounded my fist into the pillows last night, and cried uncontrollably (for a record 15 minutes) and screamed at myself, and collapsed to the floor in exhaustion, sadness, and rage, I did not think about that man two states away. I thought about my Mom, how much I wanted to call her, that I had to strain to remember what she sounded like, and could only do it under certain contexts ("Valerie ____ (middle name), get down here!"- some things you don't forget), and then only a little.

I do not play the game anymore, and I have said I will be there when the time comes, but I will not feel sad, or despondent, or the least bit guilty (Look Mom, no guilt) if I happen to miss that moment.

Today I would like to be like my sister, and go on burying my head in the sand, and pretending that he really doesn't exist, and do nothing, no matter what the news. But I was not wired in such a way. However, the sicker he gets, the worse he is, the closer he gets to that final gasp of air, the more I think about my Mom, and how much I wish she was still around; not about him. Perhaps that makes me an equally bad person; I couldn't say.

Last night I looked at my hands, that were...that are so much like hers, that are getting thinner to the point where my rings are starting to fall off as hers did close to the end, and remembered holding her hand as she died. I struggled to recall the last thing she said. Struggled because so much of her memory ingrained is of a sick, completely different person with no verbal abilities left.

I don't want that memory anymore. Christ, I don't want it. Much as I hate and love that man two states away, I don't want any new ones from him either.