Today Can Bite My Bippy

Today is a bad dead parent day.   It feels like my family doesn’t exist without them today; I know that my family DOES in fact exist without them – but still.  With the holidays looming and the Thanksgiving decision over my head it all feels too much. I wish someone, anyone, would swoop in and make the decision for me but I know that won’t happen.  There is no one who is strong enough or able enough to do it.  Rob won’t do it; he has no idea what to say to me when it comes to the topic of my dead parents so he won’t step up and say “I think this is what we should do”.  Anytime my dead father comes up in conversation, he tends to change the topic as quickly as he can; even if he doesn’t admit it I know he misses him too.  He will, on the other hand, tell me what HE wants to do for the holidays; and I think that’s adding to my problem today.  Today, I feel like he doesn’t consider me to be a part of his family.  I’m his girlfriend, but not his family.  When he says things like he wants to spend a holiday with his family, and more than half of my family is dead, it makes me feel like he has his family and I have mine and the two are separate totally separate entities. Which just makes me feel more alone; when both of your parents are dead – and as I have found especially when it happens so close together – you feel abandoned, on some level.  It’s not like I’m 5 and they dropped me off at the laundromat and didn’t come back, but it isn’t all that different emotionally.  They left and they aren’t coming back. It doesn’t matter how old I am, I still feel abandoned and alone. At least I do today.

Today I miss them so very much. I miss my Mom’s insanity and lack of a filter (I still giggle and shake my head at some of the horrible things she said at my brother’s funeral).  I miss my Dad’s laugh and knowing that he was always just a phone call away if ever I needed anything.  I still remember the day after my car accident how he asked if I needed him to take me to get the rental car, or if I wanted him to go with me to clean out my wrecked car; he offered to come up and bring me dinner, I think, too.  He was a good guy and I was lucky – or blessed, as my uncle would say – to have him for as long as I did. But damn it what I would give for just a little bit longer with him, and with her too. Yeah she was crazy – bat shit crazy was how I used to refer to her – but she was my Mom and for all that she was and wasn’t, I loved her.  And I miss that insanity that made me laugh and I wonder what kind of grandmother she would be to this amazing, and crazy, little lady that I have the pleasure of raising.  Emily is such a different kid now, almost two years after my Mom left us and I wonder how they would interact and what my Mom would say to her when she says something nutty and I wonder what my Mom would say about some of the things she does or can do.  I wish I could hear it. I wish I could hear them both again.  I have voicemails, but it’s not the same.

I know that today is happening for a lot of reasons.  Hormones, holidays.  But overall, I think it’s just another one of those days which creeps up on me and smacks me in the head to remind me that yes – both of them are gone and my life will never be the same again. As if I could ever forget.

Sigh. I Miss Him.

I have no idea why I started to think about it – maybe it was the hearse that I passed on the way to school; but I was thinking about him before that.  I can’t stop thinking about my Dad this morning and all it’s doing is making me sad and making me want to curl up in bed with some snacks, some movies, and pretend that the world doesn’t exist.  But instead, I’m at my desk trying to focus on something other than the night my Dad died.

I keep thinking – no, rehashing – what happened that night in my head.  The phone call, how it felt to hear that the doctor wanted to talk to me and later fumbling with my pants and shoes and running out the door to try to get to him before it was too late.  Hearing the nurses say they lost his pulse, watching them do CPR on him – something no one should have to watch because that was way more traumatic then it appears to be on TV.  And telling them to stop.  Standing in the hallway outside of his room, telling my best friend that he was gone and hearing the silence, and then shock in his voice because he really didn’t think that was why I was calling him and no one expected my Dad to die.  And then seeing my Dad at the funeral home, in the casket and feeling like it just didn’t look like him – until I took a few steps back and saw his profile and sat in a chair, just looking at him and trying to be more aware of the fact that he was gone.  And now, feeling that he’s just gone.  He’s not here; as much as I want him to be and as much I try not to think about it, I don’t feel like he’s with us.  Maybe it’s too soon for him to be, or maybe he’s just too busy with everyone else that he’s now reunited with.  But he’s not here.  He was the good parent, the parent that I trusted and could rely on and now that he’s gone, it just feels……..empty.  I don’t feel empty, neither does my life; but something just does.  There’s this part of me that will never be the same; I was who I was before because of him (and my Mom, too) and now I’m someone else because they are both gone. I know that he didn’t want to be here anymore.  He was so tired and probably hated being alone – with my Mom and his best friend gone, he had no one left I guess.  And I understand that, at least as best as I can even on a day like today when I would give just about anything to hear his voice again. 

And as I sit here at my desk, in my office, at a job that I hoped made him proud, I fight back the tears as I remember sitting in his chair with him watching tv when I was a little kid.  A little kid who would cram themselves onto his lap to cuddle for even a little while; eventually I got too big and I got kicked off of that lap. But then I sat next to him and often leaned my head on his lap.  He was always my favorite and now, he’s just gone.  For whatever the reason, today is one of those days that I would give anything to see his smile again and to hear his voice and to sit in that chair with him again.  That old, ratty black leather chair that squeaked when it reclined and that we shared many nights watching whatever it was that he watched at that time; I remember him sitting there while I watched the Muppet Show on summer nights before bedtime, but I am pretty sure he didn’t watch that willingly. 

Today I am 40-something year old orphan, crying in her office, who really really misses her Dad.

I'm a Soccer Mom & They're Missing It

Today and yesterday have just been hard.  Really freaking hard.  Yesterday, my daughter started soccer and I must say she did pretty freaking well.  She was a little apprehensive but as soon as the coach got her to start kicking the ball around she dove right in – she could have paid attention better and I am hoping that she becomes better at that by playing this sport. She never stops moving and really, she’s at the age that she has to start learning how to stand still/sit still when asked to do so.  There were grandparents at the field, which I didn’t expect but once I saw it I immediately put my blinders on so I didn’t have to see it.  As much as I tried, I still saw them though, and it hurt to know that if he was here my Dad would have been at that field yesterday morning.  After that we did a few things but ultimately ended up at my parents’ house; there’s a bunch of work that needs to be done so Rob cleaned off the roof, looked at the sidewalk that needs to be fixed, I cleaned out more stuff from the garage, I went through pictures – my daughter watched movies and created a dance floor with wrapping paper on the living room floor.  Yesterday was Grandparent’s Day so I guess it’s fitting that we spent the afternoon there.

Last night was the Giants vs. Cowboys football game; a night when you either a)sat on the couch and watched the insanity between my parents first-hand or b)called the next day to hear reports of the insanity. My Dad – a big Giants fan; my Mom – a HUGE Cowboys fan. They weren’t allowed to watch the game on the same TV because they would just trash-talk through the entire game.  As it was, they would get out of their seats whenever their team made a great play against the other’s team (I distinctly remember my Dad standing on the steps to the Living Room, smirking, after his team had a touch-down and my Mom telling him to go sit down it was only one play). It was always fun to watch, at least for us on the side-lines. Last year was hard, I don’t know if my Dad watched that game or not but I couldn’t do it and I thought that the next time they played, maybe we would all get together to watch. But then, he died. So this year was even harder; I saw that it was on and when I was asked if I wanted to watch it, I struggled to get out the word “no” without crying.  He should still be here for this and for so much more.

I just miss them so very much and today, it isn’t any easier.  There’s so much that they are missing and now that my daughter is getting older, she’s asking questions about where is Grandpa and she’s confused a bit because she has Grandparents in Florida, and Grandparents “in the sky” - which is where we told her heaven is.  I’m not sure that I’m doing it right, I’m not sure that it’s making any sense at all to her but I’m doing the best that I can.  I don’t fully understand why they’re gone, and there are days when it doesn’t seem real; how can I explain it to her when I don’t really understand it myself.  Being in this situation – an adult who is now an orphan – makes life difficult to navigate at times; I now have a new perspective on that movie Frozen, for example.  When Anna sits at Elsa’s door and tells her that ‘we’re all we have left now’ or something like that after their parents die, I get it.  It is incredibly lonely and scary knowing that all you have left is one other person who may remember the same things – or hopefully more than you; there’s one person left who is the same as you and who maybe gets why you feel so lonely and scared.  There is only one person in your family now – we used to be a family of five and now, there are two of us.  It’s incredibly sad and lonely sometimes when you think of it that way.

Lunch is Stupid

Emily’s school used to have a Grandparent’s Day lunch – my parents went in 2013, which apparently was this week since I just got a message that they’re doing it this Friday.  The school had stopped doing it for a while and although they did it last year, it was only for an hour and my Dad had dialysis so I didn’t ask him to go.  I should have because here they are, doing it again and he’s not here to do it.  He could have gone last year, I just wanted to save him the trouble and the travel time to get there and back home – it was stupid. I should have at least asked if he had wanted to go and I’m pretty sure he would have gone.

And now, I’ll have to talk with Emily aboutFriday’s lunch.  Some people will have Grandparents there, some people won’t. Some people have Grandparents that live far away like she does, some people don’t have Grandparents at all.  She has two who live far away; I know that she’ll also say “and my Grandma and Grandpa that live in the sky” which seems to have been sucked into her brain as of late as a way to understand where my parents are.  I feel horrible that he isn’t here to go and that he could have gone last year and I prevented him from going.  The picture I have next to my desk of the three of them together is from that day; my Dad is holding Emily and he is SO happy.  If I remember correctly, she wouldn’t go to my Mom lol.  My Mom was too sick at that point anyway and probably couldn’t have held her for much longer than a minute if that.  My Mom died four months after this picture was taken, almost to the day actually; not a day has gone by since then that I haven’t wished she was still here, enjoying her Granddaughter, who created so much hope and joy for her.  And for me, as well.

I know that one of my parental duties is talking to my daughter about my parents, helping her to understand why they are gone and who they were to her when they were here.  I just don’t want to do it now, as I continue to grieve and have bad days (like today).  It is so hard to explain and make it understandable to her, when I don’t always understand it myself.

Alarms

It dawned on me last night that I no longer have to keep the ringer in the ‘on’ position at night.  I use my phone as my alarm clock – I have for years now; I think I had a bad experience with an alarm clock not working or being knocked out in a power outage and have used my phone since then.  Mistakenly, I would turn it off from time to time.  I say “mistakenly” because it was off the morning that the hospital called to tell me my Mom had been placed in ICU because she couldn’t breathe.  I saw the call pretty quickly after I missed it – I only missed it by about 5 minutes, but it was the last time I slept with the ringer off.  Every night that she was in the hospital, after we knew there was no hope, I secretly hoped my phone would ring with the call that said she coded and we had to decide what to do.  Ironically, that’s the call I got for my Dad – not in the middle of the night…somewhere around 7:45pm, but still.  As I write this, I wonder if that was some cosmic crap that my Mom somehow pulled on us.  We wanted to get that call for her – I wanted it so that my Dad didn’t have to make the decision that he ultimately had to make with my help; I did not want that call for my Dad and  I didn’t expect it either.  He was doing okay when I left, better in fact, and then it all went to hell after we were gone.  I still wonder if somehow he knew we were gone and something inside him said “it’s okay now, you can let go”.  I think that’s what happened with my Mom, even though she fought up until the very end.

And now, I can turn the ringer off because there shouldn’t be unexpected medical emergencies in the middle of the night anymore.  There shouldn’t be any more worry that something will happen to one of them and I’ll need to bounce out of bed and run off in the middle of the night in a panic.  Those days are (hopefully) gone.  Along with both of my parents.  There are days that it just seems so unreal to be alone, without them.  As the days move on, the first signs of the impending season change are starting to pop up, I try to not think of him or her with sadness but with happiness and with smiles.  Some days it’s just so hard to do it.  I believe that he is in a better place and he is happy, but what I would give to know that he is still with us.  What I would give to still have him here!  Every time I think of all the good that he did, all of the people that he touched and all the people who he meant so much to, it just makes me sad.  An entire community mourned him two months ago and to some extent,  I hope they are still mourning – at least in a way that makes them remember him, with more joy than sadness.  Sometimes I go to the Knights of Columbus website and look at the pictures that are posted of him from years ago and they make me smile; it was there that he was happy and I hope that he is smiling that same smile, and laughing that same laugh, where ever he may be.

I Am Overly Overwhelmed

My sister and I started the process of sorting through my Dad’s finances with his advisor and I am overwhelmed. First off, the meeting was long.  Very long.  And very complicated.  On the drive home, my sister compared listening to the financial advisor to listening to the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show; at times it was like listening to a foreign language, although eventually I caught on.  There’s so much to do – so many decisions to make, so many taxes to pay, just so much.  And I am overwhelmed by it.   There isn’t a TON of money, my Dad wasn’t a millionaire by any means, but there’s enough to make it difficult and complicated and to involve a lot of decisions about what to do with it that we both have to make – some decisions are joint, some are on our own.  Some will impact her husband financially, some would impact Rob if we got married or entered into a domestic partnership (I think – that I still have to research).  So. Much. To. Do.

I have a lot on my plate right now.  A huge on-going project at work which is the complete overhaul and redesign of an existing system that is broken which, if it goes well will make me look AWESOME – and if it goes badly will basically sink me professionally.   I have on-going work with impending dead-lines, a huge upcoming meeting to coordinate and facilitated and prepare for.  Many days, if I take lunch, it’s just to go out to a drive-through and come back and do more work.  At home, I forgot about ordering my daughter’s ‘super hero’ pictures which we may have missed out on at this point, which would really suck (and man do I feel guilty about that…how many times will you get professional pictures of your adorable 3 year old posing in a cape??).  Yesterday I forgot I had already put her lunch together and scrambled frantically to make her a new lunch, all the while her originallunch sat on the shelf – thankfully because that meant today, I didn’t have to scramble.  My brother-in-law may have thyroid cancer which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t THAT bad because it’s early stage and they’ll just take out his thyroid but still.  That will hit my sister hard, especially in the realms of stress and time.  He won’t be able to work for up to 8 weeks, maybe longer depending upon his recovery, so she’ll need to take care of everything and she doesn’t get paid for days off either so financially this isn’t good for them.  And then there’s the issue of my parents’ house which is still filled to the brim with stuff that we need to sort out.  We’ve decided that we’ll probably get a table at a flea market to try to get rid of some stuff but all that means is more work – organizing things, packing them up, reserving the table, going to the bank for change, etc.  Rob and I have to decide if our daughter is playing soccer in the Fall or if she’s doing gymnastics or maybe she’ll do both – who knows.  And then it’s the money.  My Dad’s money.  There’s just so many decisions to make.  And taxes that my sister and I will have to pay.  I am praying we can stretch this money out over a number of years to minimize our taxes every year because if we can’t, I may have to start working a pole at a local gentleman’s club and really, does anyone want that?? I’m cute but I’m over 40 and I’ve had a baby. You do the math on that one.

Feeling overwhelmed is  not a feeling I enjoy at all.  I feel totally out of control of just about everything because I can’t keep on top of all of it.  I guess I should start a to do list for my life and my job – I already have a makeshift one for my job (thank God for my huge white board), but I need one for my life so I can check things off and see that I’m actually doing more than just spinning my proverbial wheels. Between the house, the kid, the school – we have to start the application process for new schools soon (shoot me), life, I am feeling lost today and I need to take some time out to find my way back, figure out priorities and just start chipping away at stuff one at a time.  I hope I can do it and not go nuts; that would be almost as much fun as working that pole at the club.

I Hope He's Smiling

My Dad was a good man, and I miss him.  I don’t actively ‘miss’ him, per se; I don’t cry or obsess over what happened, at least not regularly.  But when I glance over at the picture next to my desk of my parents and my daughter on Grandparents’ Day at school, my stomach just knots up.  If anyone should be here, it’s him. Don’t get me wrong – I still think my Mom got the short end of the stick and should have had a hell of a lot more time with Emily than she had.  Emily was a chance for her to redeem herself for what she did to me when I was a kid and that chance was cut very short, too short for my liking. But my Dad, it was just different.  He was here to hear her say Grandpa with such enthusiasm it was hard to not cry with joy over it.  He was here to buy her her first bike.  He was here to hear about all of her crazy antics at school and beyond.  And he should be here to hear more of it, to see more of it, to feel more of it.  I hate looking at that picture and remembering how much she made him smile.  My Dad didn’t have a whole lot to smile about in the last year+ of his life, except for her. I knew I could get him to laugh if I told him a crazy Emily story and now, I have to hope and find a way to believe that he sees it all now and he’s with her.  I hope that he is with me sometimes; he was my gravity – he kept my feet on the ground and he kept me upright even when a lot of my world was falling down (or up, I suppose would be the right analogy) around me. 

I have a bunch of voicemails saved on my phone from him and I know that I can listen to them when I’m ready to. It’s not like my Mom’s – she left me one voicemail, on my birthday two years ago, and it’s the only one I have.  She died so horribly, and I had to watch it happen, and it happened so unexpectedly, I can’t listen to it.  She was gone just too soon.  Way too soon.  My Dad was different – although it wasn’t expected, I wasn’t totally shocked in the end.  He went through a lot and survived much longer than anyone expected. So instead of the shock and trauma and all of the stuff that came with my Mom’s passing – which included having to wrap my head around the fact that she had cancer for all that time and we didn’t know, now I just feel sadness and a sense of ‘wrong’ in the world now that he’s gone.  I’ll never take this picture down, it will sit on or near any desk I have, but it hurts to look at it now that he’s gone.  To see him so happy, and to know that I won’t see that again, hurts. I miss him so very much.