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.

The Day After

For some reason, today is worse.  Yesterday I felt like I was in a fog – not sure what to do with myself, on the verge of tears but also kind of numb. Today I’m sad. I’m just sad, and I think it’s because of what could have been and what was. Yesterday, I could have seen my Dad for his birthday and we could have had that lunch conversation on the phone that we had every time – he’d ask where I would want to go, I’d say I don’t know, he’d laugh…what I would GIVE to have another one of those. And even if he had still been in rehab, I would have taken part of the day off to go see him and maybe have lunch or dinner together.  There’s so much I didn’t get to do.  I didn’t get to say so many things and he didn’t get to do so many things.  I miss him in a way that is different than how I miss my Mom; I miss my Mom for my daughter but my Dad I miss for myself.  He was the one I could always go to no matter what and he would listen, he would have answers, he would call to check on me – just because he wanted to.  He knew I could take care of myself, but he still wanted to do some of that, too.  I had a dream this morning that was strange but I guess I know what it means to my brain….Rob and I were at a Home Depot; we were going somewhere and for some reason stopped there.  I was holding things in my hands, talking to Rob and I turned around and he was gone – he just up and disappeared into the store.  Well there was my Dad, on line at customer service. He was walking without a cane, with his pants hiked up and his shirt tucked in – LOL – and he looked at me and said something like “oh hi Michele” and he took something out of the hands of an employee, said “thank you” to the man and turned to go to the counter.  I don’t remember anything else.  But remembering his face and his smile just makes me cry, I miss his face and his smile so much.

And yesterday, I think two people asked how I was – just two.  My best friend called to check on me and to tell me she prayed for my Dad that day and put him into the prayer book at church; I can always depend on her for support, prayers, laughs.  My own boyfriend didn’t ask.  When he came home I was emptying the dishwasher with the kitchen light off, he came sweeping in and turned on the very bright overhead light to which I said “please turn it off” and that apparently was enough to annoy him because I didn’t get a kiss hello – I suppose he was coming in to kiss me when I asked for the light to be turned off – and he barely spoke to me all night.  I know that he’s under a lot of stress and pressure this week at work so it’s not like I was angry that he didn’t text me during the day to check on me; I understood that he probably didn’t even think of it. But all night, nothing.  Again.  He did the same when it was my Mom and I thought that after going through that he would know how I would like to be treated.  Guess I have to have that conversation with him again – we’ve been through this at least three or four times in the past year.

I’m just sad today.  I want to go to the cemetery and cry; I’m pretty sure his name is up by now and I just want to go and cry.  Cry my eyes out until I can’t cry anymore because that’s just how I am right now and I was this way when it was just my Mom. Sometimes, I need to cry until my eyes ache and then I feel better; I don’t feel healed or like dancing in the streets, but I feel better.  Instead, I’m at my desk this morning because I have things to do that, I guess in some aspect of my life are more important than taking care of my own emotional health today.  I frequently put myself on the backburner which is one of the reasons why yesterday hurt so much; I do this to myself, I don’t put myself ahead of others but it would be so very nice if someone else did.

Missing Him for his Birthday

Tomorrow would have been my Dad’s 82^nd birthday.  A Tuesday; that would have meant no dialysis for him so we could have had lunch.  But I can’t have lunch with him and I am at a loss as to what to do with myself.  I am supposed to be here at work but really, I don’t know how productive I’m going to be knowing I could be taking him to lunch, calling him in the morning to wish him a happy birthday, fighting with him over who is paying the check for lunch.  If things had been different, tomorrow would be different. But it wasn’t different so tomorrow, I don’t know, tomorrow will just be another Tuesday and I will be expected to just do what I do on every other Tuesday.  I keep trying to tell myself that this is how it was supposed to go – his time was up.  But my brain, and my heart don’t care. I miss my Dad.  I miss the phone calls, the visits, the lunches and I wish I could have just one more – one more tomorrow, to celebrate him.  I still don’t totally understand what happened, as much as I know why it happened; the chances of survival after a surgery like that last one were slim but still.  He had survived so much, why not this one?  Why did this have to be the one that took him out?  Sucks.  It sucks that I have that memory to hold onto; the one of him lying there, unresponsive, on a ventilator that did not keep him alive and I did not get to say good-bye.  I didn’t even kiss him good-bye when I left that night because I figured I didn’t want to bother him, wake him, and I would see him the next day anyway. 

So today, I will do my best to not cry like I did yesterday when I was at his house cleaning up.  I don’t know how my sister did it; she put almost all of my mother’s clothes in bags so yesterday I took a bunch of my Dad’s stuff that was still around in bags and all I did was cry. I found the “Grandpa, Established 2012” t-shirt I had bought for him and I clutched it as if it was the last piece of bread after the apocalypse; I just cried.  He should still be here, wearing that shirt.  I shouldn’t be here, putting his things in bags for someone else to wear one day.  I know that donating everything is the right thing to do and he would want us to do that – but still.  Knowing that doesn’t make it easier.  All that it does is confirm that he’s gone. Walking around the house and seeing it slowly become empty just makes me sad. Although it was never my home, it was theirs and one day it will be empty and it will become someone else’s home and I don’t know where I’ll go after that day.  If I want to see his stuff, I go to the house. But once those keys are handed over, and all of the clothes are donated and the things we are keeping are in boxes, it will be over and I will just keep on with my life without either of them.  I know that this is how it’s supposed to be – the parents die before their children – but again, it doesn’t make it any easier.  I miss my Dad.  I just really miss him.

Honesty

This morning on the way to school, Emily asked me who bought her bike – she was supposed to ride it today in a trike-a-thon fundraiser but it rained (she still had questions about the bike though!).  So I told her that Grandpa bought it (my Dad).  So then she started asking how he was – “how my Grandpa doing, he sick Momma”.  Well, I bit the bullet and we started the conversation I have been putting off for over a month now.  I told her that he was old and sick, and that our hearts are like batteries and when you’re old and sick, they stop working just like batteries.  So Grandpa isn’t with us anymore because his battery stopped working, but he’s in heaven now and we can talk to him whenever we want.  Of course, next came “what is heaven”, which I tried to explain as best I could. And then came what I didn’t expect and I don’t know that I’ve heard before – “I love my Grandpa”.  Yeah, I started crying like a baby and I struggled to get out “I love Grandpa too, and we will always love him and he will always love us”.

I know that this is the first of what will most likely be many conversations about Grandpa and where he is and why we can’t see or talk to him.  But she needed to know and I wanted to be the one that told her.  I still have rather vivid memories of my Grandmother dying; I was almost 5 years old and my aunt told my parents to  not tell me because I wouldn’t understand.  But I was still brought to the wake, where I sat in a separate room alone during a prayer service. I snuck a peek into the room and I saw my Grandmother lying there and I was so confused!  Why is Grandma sleeping in that room with everyone???  And the next day we went to church, where I watched my parents walk down the aisle after a big brown box – what the heck???  And then the cemetery, where I was given a rose to put on the casket and for some reason that’s when it hit me that she was dead. She wasn’t sleeping; that was why everyone was so sad. Grandma had died and I had figured it out on my own. I cried and cried; I cried myself to sleep in the backseat of my cousin Rick’s white car, on the shoulder of his then girlfriend. I didn’t want anything like that to happen with my daughter; I never want her to say that I didn’t tell her because that wasn’t fair to do to me and I won’t do it to her.  I always want to be honest with her, no matter how much it may hurt me to do it.

One Month

One month today, May 30^th, I lost my Dad.  One month ago I got a phone call that I wish had never come; I still find it hard to believe that a doctor asked me if I wanted them to continue ‘life saving measures’ on my father as I stood in my kitchen forty minutes away.  One month ago right now, I was on my way to the hospital to sit with him – which I don’t know if he knew I had done for the few days following that day.  I hope he knew I was there.  One month ago, I thought and said out loud to the universe “if he has to go, take him now and stop his suffering but I don’t want to lose him so if there is any way we can keep him for a while I would appreciate that” but it wasn’t meant to be, for whatever reason.  I know that things happen for a reason and, as a number of people have said, my Dad wasn’t happy anymore.  He had lost his wife, he was alone in the house for the first time in over 50 years, and then he lost his best friend and I think that was the last straw on top of a heap of health issues that kept landing him in the hospital and this final time, he was done.  He was just done and it didn’t matter that he had a granddaughter that loves him, that needed to see him again, that needed him to come over one last time to see her.  It didn’t matter that I wanted him here for a countless number of reasons; all of those reasons are about me and my daughter, not about what was apparently right for him.  I know that he is happy where he is and he’s okay – there’s no way my Dad went anywhere but to a very happy, wonderful place. He was a good man, treated everyone well, and he deserved nothing short of paradise after this life was over. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still wish he was here; I wish it so very much.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think “man this sucks”.  Today is definitely a “man this sucks” day.

Remembering standing in that room, seeing what they had done and were doing to and with my Dad to try to keep him alive….it breaks my heart.  I wish he had crashed when we were there; at least we could have prevented some of what they had done and he could have just gone peacefully and quickly – which is what ended up happening in the end.  My Mom was different, she didn’t want to go.  He did.  He didn’t want to do this anymore and he left us when I guess, to him, was a good time.  He waited until we were both gone, I guess he wanted to spare us some sort of pain – yeah the phone call was worse than if we had been there, I think.  But still.  I hate that he died in that room alone, without us there.  My Dad never leaned on anyone for help; he hated that we took days off from work to take him to doctor appointments, or to come to the hospital to visit or to talk to doctors.  He didn’t want anyone to be inconvenienced (wonder where I get that from?).  So once we were gone, he let go and left us.  I wish he had held on, I wish that he felt he had something to hold on for – regardless of how much pain he was in, or how much work he would have had ahead of him to get better, I wish he had wanted to stay. But I know that he didn’t and a part of me will always wonder why we weren’t enough for him to want to hold on, to want to fight; I know that’s a question I will never be able to answer and I hope I can let go of it.  I hope to see him again one day, and I wait every day for a sign that he’s here and I hope to see that soon. I miss him.  I really, really just miss him.

And now, he's gone.

He’s just gone and I can feel it now.  I’m not sure what flipped the switch but now, as I sit at my desk reading the note that I got back from the Grand Knight of the Knights chapter in Somerset, I feel it.  He’s just gone now, and things will never really ever be the same again. It feels different than when it was my Mom; I guess because with my Dad, I know he’s in a better place and I know he is happy there.  I still don’t know what my mother is doing, where she is, if she’s happy – she was never really happy so who knows if she is now.  I miss his laugh the most, I think.  He had this great laugh and a great smile, too; it was hard to see the smile sometimes though because of the bushy goatee he wore (my mother hated that thing).  There are many things that I miss about him but I think that’s the thing I miss the most.  He was a funny guy, and not everyone knew that.  A lot of people saw him as being pretty serious and all business, because in many settings that how he was.  But with us, or with his friends, he had a great sense of humor and it always caught me off-guard because he was pretty reserved overall and when he came out with something totally off the cuff it would make you laugh until you cry.  I miss that.

I know that I am not alone in my grief and my sense of loss.  My Dad was a great guy and so many people are missing him now.  But for me, it’s different. He was always there, even when my Mom wasn’t – or she was too drunk to really be ‘there’ for anyone; I have far too many memories of being a child left alone to fix dinner, getting myself ready to walk to the school bus alone, watching her stumble around unable to balance herself even when she stood still.  Growing up in the chaos that was my house, he was my only constant.  I knew when he would be there and when he wouldn’t be, and I knew what I would get when he was there. Sure, back then I didn’t get much that wasn’t grumpy but still I knew what it was and it was okay for the most part.  As he got older and life changed, he changed and he wasn’t as grumpy anymore.  And then, he was again as he got sicker and older and he was alone.  And I understand that now, too.  But he was my constant, my supporter through the good and the oh so very bad.  When my mother said I was ruining my life by getting divorced and I stopped speaking to her, he was the one that told her to mind her own business and that I needed to be happy, even if that meant I got divorced.  He offered me a ridiculous amount of money to help me buy a house before my daughter was born; that money is still sitting in a bank account.  He never reinvested it, he was holding it until we were ready and then it would be mine to use.  He was always just there, a phone call away for anything I needed.  And now, he’s not.  And that is just weird. He has always been there. My phone won’t ring anymore with him asking how I am, how’s Emily doing, asking if I’m free for lunch, asking if we’re around this weekend so he can come up to see her.  It’s gone now and all that’s left are the memories, which I cherish and always will. 

I need a cookie. Or fifty of them....

I received two letters in the mail.  The first I actually got at work – it was sent to my office by the Knights of Columbus council in Somerset that my Dad had belonged to and was a charter member of.  My office had collected some money to donate to them in his name after he passed away and this letter was acknowledging that donation.  But it also said something else.   They created a fund in my Dad’s name, which will house any money that is donated to them in his name, and any distributions to charitable organizations will be done in his honor.  The first time I read it, my boss was sitting on the other side of my desk and I did my best to hide my tears.  24 hours later I am still in awe that they have done this for him and for his memory.  That was the first letter that made me cry; I cried every time I read it yesterday.

The second letter came to my home from the church in Somerset.  They refunded the money we paid for the organist and cantor; the pastor basically said they wouldn’t take our money.  The woman that wrote the letter, a nun, had been the principle at the school at the time that they built an expansion onto the building. My Dad was a part of that building committee and was involved in creating and approving the plans; the principal was also on that committee and she commented on the fond memories she had of him from that time.  She went on to say other things, wonderful things, that I couldn’t read because of the tears in my eyes.  I cried every time I tried to read it yesterday; I’ll try again when I get home today.

And here I sit today, revoking the words I wrote before those letters arrived.  Yesterday, I cried a lot. I even cried when Rob read the letters; he read them because I couldn’t tell him what they said.  As I tried to, I started to cry; and when he started to talk about how wonderful my Dad was and what an impact he made on his community, I cried more.  What makes me cry the most often are the words of others about my Dad.  I knew he meant a lot to people and that people appreciated him but to hear the words or to read them, or to see that a fund has been created in his name, just brings it home as being real.  I know that a lot of people are sad now that he is gone; I know that my sorrow is shared by more people that I probably even realize.  He was loved and appreciated so very much and now, he is missed just as much.  And that makes me sad, too.  To know that so many people miss him, so many people are sad now.  I know that he was sick and tired, and tired of being sick, and I am sure that it was just  his time – there was such a risk with the last surgery that this, I think, was the inevitable outcome.  He had been through so much over the past few years that his heart was just done and I think his soul was just done and he let go, he stopped fighting – which I know I will accept one day. But still.  I had wanted him around for at least another year so that I knew for sure my daughter would remember him and so he would know that she got into a good school and she was going to have a good, happy, successful life in a nice home. And even though, on that day as I left my house to go see him at the hospital, I said to the universe or to God “if he’s going to go, please just take him today and stop his suffering because this isn’t fair”, I still wasn’t ready for him to leave us just yet.  I had wanted him around for so much more and I know that a lot of other people feel the same way.  I laugh but it’s true; he’s turned into ‘the man, the myth, the legend’.  And I’m okay with that.  He was great, and he is missed.

Father's Day

I think everyone expected me to fall apart yesterday, but I didn’t.  Yes, it was Father’s Day.  It was the first one without my Dad, and it was just three weeks after he passed.  I think Saturday, the three week mark, was harder. We were in the car when 7:32 struck; that was the first time he coded three weeks ago.  And again at around 7:45 or 7:50, when I got the call.  That is harder. Father’s Day was, numbing.  I didn’t feel much of anything, which is kind of how I feel most days lately and I don’t know why.  I don’t know if this is my brain protecting me from the utter pain and sorrow I would be in if I was allowed to feel it; I don’t know if I just can’t feel any more than I already have – which I think may be the real deal.  Whenever I do think about it, the word that crosses my mind the most is just “f*ck”.  As it was the day that we walked into his room, well the day that I sprinted to his room from the elevator and that’s all I kept saying over and over.  That’s all I can keep saying.  Do I cry?  Of course I do. Every time I have to go to the house and see his car still sitting there, I’m reminded that he’s gone.  Every time I walk through the door, using my own key, I am very well aware of the fact that he is gone.  They both are.

Yesterday was not my worst day, and I am sure that I will have plenty that will be harder.  The day my daughter is accepted into school, the first day of school, the day we move into a house, or hell even looking at houses will be hard; I had planned on bringing him with us, have him look at the electrical and the plumbing and help to negotiate a price for it like he has for every car I’ve bought.  The day I have to put tires on my car, I will probably cry just because I always asked him what I should buy.  Stupid stuff that really, isn’t about him but I wanted him to be there for.  I knew he wouldn’t be there for my daughter’s high school graduation, but I had hoped he would be there for the first Grandparent’s Day at school – but he won’t be.  My brain is just saying “f*ck” and “ugh this sucks” over and over and over and I don’t feel much of anything at all.

My Dad was a great man.  As one of my friends said “he was one of the best Padres I ever knew”, and it’s true.  Sure he was tough, sure he was absent for reasons that I now understand.  He drove us to the mall more times than I can count; he saved me from the roadside more times than I can count, and at all hours of the day and night.  And when the chips fell, he was there.  When I needed him, he was there.  He picked up the phone and called me, he offered to bring me soup every single time I was sick, he offered to watch my daughter time and time again even when he didn’t have to, he was always just there to fall back to whenever I needed to. And now, it sucks that he’s gone and I just feel different.  Maybe that’s why  I’m not crying – it’s because I’m just not the same anymore; I don’t know how to feel, I don’t know how to cry because I just don’t feel the same way I did before he died.  It’s hard to cry when the feelings just aren’t there; the emptiness I feel this time around is bigger than I can ever put into words.

My World Without Him - Today

When someone asks how I am, I am finding that I give them a high-level peek into how I am but then I change the conversation to what has to get done now.  “Now there’s just so much to do” is what I find myself saying over and over again; there’s a house full of their things, there’s a car, there’s a will, there are bills to be paid.  I don’t happen to mention that almost anytime I think about him or I’m reminded of the fact that he’s gone, it takes every ounce of strength I have to not openly sob and fall onto the floor.

I just ran into my Executive Director, she’s basically the Head Cheese at my office, and she asked how I was.  She’s very compassionate and I know I could have been honest with her – I could have told her that he was my heart, he was my constant supporter and that I just feel like the world is wrong now that he’s gone. I could have told her that it all feels like a bad dream that won’t go away.  I could have told her that anytime my office door is closed, it’s because I’m crying.  But I didn’t. I stuck to the facts, said that it’s been hard, and went right to my stand-by statement about all that we have to do now.  Why did I do it?  Because I can’t be the girl that stood at the copy machine with the Executive Director and cried her eyes out.  I was the girl that went into that woman’s office about a year and a half ago and started crying when I had to tell her my Mom had kidney cancer and was going into the hospital.  I can’t be the girl that can’t seem to stop crying, even though deep down, I am her.  The other night I went to bed early because I didn’t feel well; turns out I didn’t feel well because I had bottled up all of the sadness from my day.  When I laid in bed and cried for a bit, I felt better; the pain in my stomach went away.  So I guess this time around, I get to experience the physical effects of grieving.  Last time, it was just the emotional.  Oh grief – how I loathe you and wow, you really really suck.  Thanks for making this even harder than it already was going to be.

Calendars Suck, Too

A month before my Dad passed away, we had lunch together for the last time, for my birthday.  He wanted to take me out for my birthday.  And it was on April 30; he passed on May 30.

I found it on my calendar as I was searching for dates to enter into a report and ever since I saw it, I’m just sad.  God I miss him so very much.  I don’t know how to describe it; it’s different from when it was my Mom.  My Mom was a shock, and she was sick with no hope of recovering so it was horrible and tragic and traumatizing and I held her hand as she died.  But my Dad, we thought he’d be okay.  We knew if he did the road home would be a long one but we were hopeful and at no point did anyone say “there’s nothing we can do” until it was over and they were asking if they should continue doing CPR.  I hate knowing that those lunches we shared over the past 16 months after my Mom will never happen again.  I won’t hear him say “hi Michele, this is Dad” on my voicemail again on a Thursday morning asking where I want to meet and when.  Ugh. I just HAD to find it today, a day that wasn’t all that great to begin with.  Thank you, universe.  The kick in the stomach was just what I needed today.

Death Sucks

A friend, granted not a very close friend anymore, lost her baby girl last week.  I don’t know what happened and I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter.  Her 8 month old is gone, that’s what matters.  Gone are the good-night kisses and snuggles that I relish, gone are the smiles and baby giggles, gone is that baby girl.  THAT is something I don’t think I will ever understand – why a child has to die.  My Dad was old and sick, and I guess his time had come. I am a pretty strong believer that things happen for a reason. My Dad’s passing was probably because it was just his time, he had a hard life, was sick for a long time and held on as long as he could.  His wife, his best friend, the rest of his family were all waiting for him to show up on the other side to organize the party.  But the loss of this little baby has no justification in my book.  I am sure her family is standing strong; her mother is one strong woman. She raised her oldest daughter on her own and came from a tough life herself, I pray her for and for the strength that she has always had – for it to stay with her, not fail her, to grow ever stronger and bigger to support this new weight has will carry for the rest of her life.

My Dad will forever be missed by me.  And I have the memories of him to make me laugh eventually, for now they just make me cry.  I hope that they were able to gather up memories in the past 8 months with that baby that will last a life-time and will one day, bring them joy.  And who knows.  My Dad loved babies and babies loved my Dad, maybe he’ll keep an eye on her up there until her parents join her one day. 

One Week an Orphan

I’ve been trying to write this for a while now.  But now that I’m back at work it seems the right time to just do it.

My Dad died on May 30^th.  I got the call around 7:50 that he had coded.  His blood pressure dropped, he stopped breathing and coded.  They wanted to know if they should continue life saving measures.  How do you answer that on the phone, without your sibling, and while you’re at least 40 minutes away???

I got there in 25 minutes.  It may have been 23, I’m not sure. I met my sister there. 

When we got up to his room, after I yelled at a security guard in the ER, they had done CPR again after he crashed again. He was on a ventilator but they kept losing his pulse.  They lost it again as we stood there, and they started CPR but I asked them to stop.  We agreed that wasn’t what he would have wanted and they were working on him for so long that even if they were able to get him back, his brain wouldn’t be alive anymore.  It wouldn’t be my Dad.

He passed as soon as they took him off the ventilator.  We were not in the room but went in shortly after.

And now, as I joked with my sister as we sat in the room with our dead father, we are now orphans.  He had been in the hospital for a while and although we knew he may not get better, we kept hoping that he would use up another of those 9-lives and make it through it.  But this time, it wasn’t meant to be.  We sat there with him for a while, in disbelief.  All I could keep saying was “fuck” over and over. What else could I say?  I had this whole speech prepared to give him once I knew he could hear me and it was all about how he had to get better so he could see my daughter in gymnastics class, see her go off to private school next year, celebrate her next birthday.  But I never got to say it. He was out of it more than in the last few days and I never got to say it.  There’s a lot I didn’t get to say, including good-bye.

It’s kind of hard to believe that he’s gone.  We had thought for the longest time that he would go first and when he didn’t, there was that additional shock on top of the shock of losing my Mom so quickly and traumatically.  And now that it is him that’s gone, it’s odd.   I can feel that there is something wrong with the world now that he’s no longer in it.  It feels weird not being able to call him, check on him, tell him another funny Emily story.  Everything just doesn’t feel the same anymore and I don’t know that it ever will.

I can’t say how many times I heard the words “wonderful”, “giving”, “dependable”, “always there”, “great” and “we will miss him” followed by “greatly”, “so much” and “more than I can say”.  He was a wonderful man and hearing everyone from the recreation secretary at his retirement community to some of his closest friends say the same things over and over just confirm that I was lucky enough to be Angelo’s daughter.  He will always be the one that supported me the most, the one that just wanted me to be happy no matter what it meant.  He will always be the one that initially scared most of my friends but in the end, made them feel like one of his own.  I posted on Facebook that my world feels a little bit darker now, and I think that it will always be that way. He had a way of lighting up a room with his smile and always managed to break an uncomfortable silence with a great laugh.  And I will miss that.  I will miss being able to call him my Dad, because that was one of the biggest honors I will ever receive in this life.  He was a good man and he is very sorely missed.

Deja F You

Every time I have sat down to write this, to clear my head of all of this, I suddenly lose my words.  I have a lot to say, but I’m not entirely sure how to say it all.

My Dad has been in the hospital for two weeks today; today being what would have been my parents’ 61^st wedding anniversary.  He has had a toe amputated, his foot debrided twice, and one surgery to perform angioplasty on the arteries in his leg.  He was doing well, they were planning on discharging him to an inpatient rehab facility tomorrow – Friday.  I was manically trying to help the social worker find a suitable facility that had inpatient dialysis; without that, we would have to pay out over $300/week in transportation fees to get him to dialysis.  I was also working on trying to get together some transportation options for when he got home. But that all came to a screeching halt yesterday when, after the second debridement surgery, the doctor said that the area didn’t bleed as much as she thought it would and she called his vascular surgeon. I called that surgeon who said my Dad’s arteries are calcified.  He will reassess him today and most likely go back into his leg, this time through his ankle, to try and open up the circulation more.  My Dad also has what’s called skin break-down, which basically is damaged skin which would open up and turn into an ulcer if it is not treated and improves.  So – if the circulation doesn’t improve, if the skin breakdown doesn’t improve or gets worse, he could lose his lower leg.  Hearing those words were worse than what I imagine an actual kick to the stomach would be like; I’ve never been kicked in the stomach, except from the inside out (and man that kid was a strong kicker) but I can imagine that it sucks as much as that did.  I had heard that he might lose his foot, but that was prior to the toe amputation and circulation surgery last week. As far as I was concerned, he was on a smooth ride out the hospital door and into rehab, which meant one step closer to home.

Suddenly, everything just stopped.  And since that call I have spent more time reading up about amputations in dialysis/diabetic patients than I care to mention.  I have seen pictures that no one should see – it is AMAZING what comes up in Google; certain things really should be left for medical professionals to view.  Once I avoided or at least averted my eyes to the graphic images, I read medical studies – I’m not sure how many – that all basically had the same message.  Amputation at his age, and with all of the medical conditions he has, will inevitably shorten his life-span to that of dandelion that’s been picked by my toddler.  If he were to survive surgery, he may not live more than 30 days after the procedure. If he were to make it past the 30 day mark, chances are he wouldn’t live another two years.  And what would those two years be like?  I’ve tried to envision it but it is not a pretty picture, no matter what I try to toss in there to make it a more manageable image. He is wheelchair bound because he can’t lift himself up to use crutches. He is depressed because his independence has been taken away.  He is alone, in a wheelchair. If he makes it out of the hospital, out of rehab, maybe he lives with us – we would have to buy a home in his area that is accessible to him. His sense of humor is gone; not that it’s in the best of shape now but he is able to still laugh and joke, which is a good sign.  I want him to be here long enough to make memories that will last the rest of my life-time and that of my daughter, but it is not often that the universe grants us what we want.  My Dad has been through so much in this life and for this to happen now, which will be the end of his life if this is the path we have to take, it is heart-breaking and makes me feel like I have been robbed of yet another parent. I watched my Mom slowly die and I feel like I will be forced to relive that with my Dad.  He has always been the stable one, the reliable one, the supportive one; he’s the one left that knows what we were all like as children, he’s the one left that remembers what it was like as we grew older and crazier. I realize that I am lucky he is still here; he should have died in 1999.  But regardless of how lucky I should be, today, I don’t feel very lucky at all.  I feel sad, shocked, scared, alone, exhausted, numb……but certainly not lucky.

Mother's Day Once More

So yesterday was Mother's Day. I cried for a pretty good amount of it, and in fact, I'm still crying. It's been a great few days.

Why am I crying? I felt alone. Really, really alone yesterday. Rob worked and I got one phone call all day long. Rob's family had already reached out to me the other day to check on my Dad so I didn't expect to hear from them. My sister texted me in the early afternoon and I guess my Dad couldn't figure out how to call me from the hospital. Rob texted me in the morning. Emily and I had about two or maybe three hours of decent time together when no one said no and no one felt like they were talking to a wall. But that didn't last. Carried over to the birthday party I took her to, where she fought me so hard to leave that she fell down some stairs in the yard, backwards as she backed away from me as I said "honey I have to get your socks and shoes on so we can go". I just felt isolated yesterday. There was no one to celebrate and there was no celebration for me. No "thank you"s were said, no flowers were given. Rob gave me a very practical gift and got Rita's ice - which he wanted and he likes; the night before I said I wanted ice cream or cake. Obviously that request went unnoticed or just forgotten.

I was asked questions all day long. Request after request for things - more water, a different tv show, more chicken, different clothes, calls I didn't want to make but was asked to make them anyway. Over and over and over. Only once was I asked how I was - as I sat on the couch, on the verge of tears and he played with her in the back I heard "you ok", to which I said "yeah I'm fine" which we all know means I am NOT FINE. And then he asked "do you miss us" to which I said "ummm no, I'm good". I don't think he liked my candor but quite frankly, fuck him and his joke because I sat in that house and at that party miserable and alone all damned day. Some mothers were being celebrated with breakfast in bed, flowers, cards extolling their glory and awesomeness. I was being told "no" over and over all day long by a stubborn toddler while only one person called. And even she was too busy celebrating with her own mother to hear just how sad I was.

My Dad

I really shouldn’t be taking time out of my day to write this – I am more swamped than I can explain and under a TON of pressure to get all of my work done as soon as possible…but I need to get this out of my brain.

My dad isn’t doing well.  He’s been having pains in his legs, so bad that it’s affecting his mobility.  I saw him yesterday and he just doesn’t look good.  My sister said that when she went to church with him on my Mom’s birthday, he had to stop walking because he couldn’t get his breath and it took a while for him to catch his breath – they were already sitting down when he finally was breathing normally. Really wish she had told me that a week ago.  But now, on top of the mobility issues and now the breathing issues, he’s having memory issues.  Yesterday at lunch, the waitress came over to take our drink order and left.  A few moments later he said “did she take our order yet”.  Our menus were still sitting on the table.  He can remember things across days or even weeks, but his short term may be affected by this circulation issue in his legs – which could also be affecting his heart. If he’s losing his breath, his heart isn’t operating as well as it should.  My sister said that she’s noticed he’s had some weird memory things happen as of late, but she didn’t think it was a big deal.  He’s not a young man but still – for it to be so sudden like this, scares the hell out of me.  He had quadruple bypass in 1999 after going into heart failure, after a heart attack.  He’s had other surgeries, other heart issues, now has a defibulator instead of the pacemaker he was given a few years ago.  He’s on dialysis because his kidneys failed after a cardiac procedure a few years ago.   But I don’t care about all of that, I care about him being okay which he certainly is not right now.

I really am trying to keep myself together but in my head, I am a total and utter mess. I am totally 100% freaking out and somehow, I have to keep it together so I can get my job done today. I don’t know how to do this. Again.  I am so scared that his days are a lot more numbered than I thought they were; after yesterday, I’m really worried.  Really really worried.

I can’t lose my Dad yet.  I know that I will eventually; the man will be 82 in July so it’s not like he’s young. But still.  I can’t do this again. Not yet.

Today Sucks

Today sucks.  that’s right – it’s not even 9amand it sucks.  I have already laid down the gauntlet, thrown my hands up in the air and said I have HAD IT, I give up, that’s it.

Why?

Yesterday was hard for me, harder than I realized until the day was near its end.  And then we had a HUGE fight last night, the same exact fight we had a year ago – over baseball and the summer.  If he goes to all of the games/tournaments this summer that he intends on going to, on top of the whole working every 3^rd or 4^th weekend thing, he will be out of the house for approximately 9 weekends of the 12 or 13 that make up the summer months.  Again.  Last year it was going to be 9 or 10 and I think it turned out to be 7, still about half the summer was spent apart with him at games or at work and me with our toddler – and last summer was rough, she was a BEAST for a large portion of the time that we spent alone and I was miserable already because my mom had just passed away; according to him I can’t count the work weekends though since those are out of his control.  This year I asked to be a part of the conversation, to have a choice and a voice in the conversation because last year I didn’t have one.  I was told what he was doing last year, not asked or consulted but told.  So this year I wanted to have a choice; I wanted to be able to say no this isn’t acceptable to me.  Well, I still don’t have one because although he said “these are the games I would like to go to”, when I tried to take one – just one – off the schedule I was told that he never gets to see his kids, he’s here all the time, he sees RJ every 6 weeks at best and in a nutshell I inferred from the conversation that his decision was made and I pretty much just have to live with it. Again.  We never even got to the look at the entire schedule because he was adamant about the dates around her birthday. It got to the point that I said, just as I did last year, “send me the dates that you’re going to go and I’ll just figure it out because if I say no, I’m refusing you the chance to see your kid and that’s not fair so I’ll just deal with it”.  Which really, isn’t fair either.  I’m a part of this too, this affects me too but I guess that pales in comparison to him seeing or not seeing his 17 year old play in yet another game, in yet another tournament while I stay home for yet another weekend trying to manage everything that has to get done and my insanely active toddler for almost the entire summer.

I was an afterthought for a very long time in our relationship because of the obligations he had to his children and his then wife, and now I am yet again feeling like an afterthought – just like last year.  Last year, part of my argument was that I was still a mess from losing my mom and I didn’t know how I was going to handle 9 weeks alone with her – but he did it anyway.  This year, when I said that I was hoping to get to his parents’ house in June so they could spend Emily’s birthday with her he told me that if it was that important to me (yes, they’re his parents but if seeing them for Emily’s birthday was that important to ME), then either the weekend before her birthday or the one after is when we would be gone and that would be taking a game off the table; whatever I wanted to do with my family I would be doing without him – I don’t need him there.  The majority of these weekends are back-to-back, so he will have to move around his work schedule in order to go to them which means more back-to-back weekends that I’m left to juggle all of it during the week AND during the weekend. He tried to compare the 12 days last year that he spend alone with her – those 12 days were spread out between March and October, they were not back-to-back and they were in no way consecutive but apparent in his world, it’s the same thing.  Don’t even ask me how often I was alone with her last year; I can’t count that high.  So again – no choice, no compromise, no nothing.  Why did I even bother trying when obviously this conversation, this topic, this entire area of his life is still off limits to me.  Whether it be when he chooses to call me only from the car when he’s in NC with them, or when it’s in making choices about how he will spend his weekends, I am out of the conversation and I am not allowed to have options.  My voice doesn’t matter.

So on top of the crappiness that I feel after yesterday, I now have this to deal with which just makes me want to crawl under my desk and cry into a pint of Ben n Jerry’s.  Oh if only that were an actual option today.

Her Birthday

My attempt to post old entries back-fired on me this weekend.  I tried, but they would only save to draft.  I think that was the universe’s way of saying ‘ummm – now is not a good time, try back later, have some chocolate in the meantime’.  And that’s what I did.  :)

Yesterday was…….I don’t know, it just kind of was.  It felt strange to just go about my day and act like it wasn’t an important or special day.  I was alone with Emily for the majority of the day and we went to the playground, fought once about something that is inconsequential now; we stayed home most of the day since we were out all day on Saturday.  And I tried to not remember what day it was, but it was hard to forget.  It was hard to forget that my Dad was having a mass said for her, it was hard to forget that he would have come home after a regular mass with flowers for her had she still been here.  It’s hard to forget, and I know that I will never forget it.  I wore her necklace yesterday and I told Emily it was Grandma’s birthday, even though I don’t think she understood I want her to know that the day is still important even though Grandma isn’t with us anymore.

If my Mom was still here, we would have gathered around and gone to dinner – a restaurant the rest of us picked because she NEVER picked (but always complained about it somehow – the bread was too hard, the food was too hot/too cold, the plates were too big/small, the tea wasn’t hot enough/too hot, the sauce wasn’t as good as hers, the music was too loud, our waitress too perky, etc. etc. etc.), went back to her house for coffee and cake. I would have gotten her flowers from Emily and had them sent to her – she loved getting flowers delivered to the house.  I would have heard her complain about getting older, and joking about why God has kept her here this long (to keep things interesting and/or to keep an eye on my father).  I wish those jokes were still funny.  Many things that were once funny – like calling her bat shite crazy – aren’t as funny as they used to be; I hope that changes one day.

You can’t really celebrate a birthday for someone who has passed away; a birthday is a celebration of their life, the past year of that life.  And there is no more life to celebrate; her life ended before it should have, in my opinion (I am all too familiar with the idea of things happening for a reason, which I usually agree with, but this one I don’t understand and I don’t know if I ever will).  I wish my Dad was open to doing something for her, like having a big lunch with their friends and talking about her and really celebrating her.  Maybe next year (God willing, as my Mom would have said).

My birthday is a week from today and I’m not dreading it as much as I think I did a year ago, but I also know that it won’t be an easy day. My Mom’s birthday was yesterday, and the 6^thanniversary of my friend’s passing is this weekend as well.  I am hoping that it will be easier than last year but I have come to a realization – your birthday will never be more important to anyone than to your mother.  She will always think of you on that day, no matter what relationship you have, and she may smile or cry or cringe but she will think of you.  My mother took the opportunity to remind me I was getting old, remind me that she was not getting old, and recount how she found out she was pregnant, how my Dad was at my Grandmother’s house for lunch when I was born and she was very mad at him by the time he finally showed up.  That call will never come again, although my Dad will try.  Those stories will never be told again because they were hers.  And mine – and now they are just mine, and right now I have no one to tell them to(at least no one who will really want to hear them again).  No one will ever care more about that day than her, and that diminishes the importance of that day forever.  It will never be that important to someone ever again, and that sucks.  I hope that it won’t hurt as much as it did last year when my phone didn’t ring, when the stories didn’t come and when I didn’t get to hear her say “Hi Sweetheart, it’s Mom” one more time.

WTF

I don’t know why this realization is a realization at all – seems like something that’s obvious but for some reason, it smacked me in the head just now.

It’s been two years since my Mom called me on my birthday.

Last year was the first year she was gone, so there was no call. The last call was the year before – which was two years ago.

That fact just makes it suck more.  I haven’t heard her voice in almost a year and a half; technically it’s been a year and……..3 months, 18 days – give or take.

Two years just sounds so big. When I think about the strides my daughter has made in those two years, or where I am in my life now compared to two years ago, it’s immeasurable.

Yeah, this just sucks.

Trying to not slack off....

I’ve slacked off. I admit it.  I will write entries for this blog at work, where I can’t access this site; I’ll send those entries to my email address so that I can post them later.  Well, later has become days and days later. Which isn’t good so I am going to do my best to keep up with this a little bit better than I have been – I think it’s important for me to do it, and if there’s someone out there reading this, looking for help or inspiration or some insight into what this is like for someone you know or even just for a good laugh, well then it’s important to you too.

I will be posting some of the items that I haven’t put up yet – that’ll happen this weekend.

But for today – Sunday is my Mom’s birthday.  It doesn’t feel as ominous as it did last year; last year it was her birthday and then Easter right after.  Oh and the memorial service at the cemetery was the week before so really, those two weeks were just full of tears and tissues.  Then, toss in my birthday about a week later and MAN was that fun. NOT.  (Oh and a trip to the in-law’s too.) This year, the only thing that’s moved is Easter but things feel easier (no trip this year, either).  At least so far.  I’m upset that I can’t go to mass on Sunday; Rob is working and unless I want to bring my toddler to mass – which I do not – I can’t go.  And I’m not willing to pay for the babysitter AGAIN so I can go out and do something to honor my dead mom.  I’m just not; I’m angry that I have to go out of my way to juggle things in order to do it so I’m choosing to not even bother trying.  Which might be the right approach this year.  That way, I won’t dwell – yes I’ll think about her all day and I will feel badly that I can’t go to mass with my Dad and my sister but my hope is that I will be too busy chasing around my crazy kid to think about it too much; I am hoping that at least at some points it will feel like a regular Sunday and not her birthday – I don’t want to forget it, but I don’t want to feel it.   I sat in that church on the anniversary of her death, waiting for them to say her name and with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat I tried to pretend that I wasn’t about to crumble into a messy heap of tears and snot; and honestly, I don’t want to do that this weekend.  I miss her, and I know that this my Dad’s way of honoring her and marking her birthday, but I can’t do it and on some level I’m grateful that I have this excuse.  I know that I should go out of obligation and all that jazz, but I just don’t want to cry or watch my Dad cry.

My birthday is around the corner and so far, it doesn’t feel as – ominous, for lack of a better word right now – than last year.  But that might change in the next week or so.  I know that,  no matter what I do, my birthday will always be a little bit sad; it was a little bit sad before my Mom passed away.  My cousin was buried on my birthday, my best friend died two days before my birthday and her funeral was a few days later.  My birthday hasn’t been a fun occasion in a very long time. But I also recognize that there is a hole there now. My birthday was an opportunity for my Mom to remind me that I was getting older – I was getting older, she was NOT – and it was a chance for her to tell the story of how she found out she was pregnant and how my dad wasn’t at the hospital when I was born and all of those other fun stories that were an annual event.  My birthday was important to her, and now, that importance is gone and it will never come back.   No one can ever fill that void that is left now that I won’t get my annual call at 12:2something in the afternoon; I will always look at the clock and cry a little…or at least I’ll want to cry a little, not so sure I’ll be able to each year.  It will never be the same again, and I know that one day I’ll be able to reconcile with that idea and the feelings that come along with it. And I hope that this year remains easier.  I guess this is the having hope stage of grief.  I will say this for sure – this does not suck as much as the previous stages, and that’s gotta count for something.

The Big H

I know I’ve mentioned the sign before – the big white “H” on the big blue sign that sits at the traffic light I often stop at on the way to dropping my daughter off at school.  This morning, as I sat there ignoring it as I often do, I heard “Momma!  LOOK! Letter H!  BIIIIIIG H MOMMAAAAA!!!!”.  Like it was the most amazing thing she has ever seen on our car ride ever.  And it might have been; I think this is the first time she pointed out a letter to me. She’s usually too engrossed in a book or the ipad.  But not today.  Today, she saw the sign and called it out….well, yelled it out.  It was cute, and I’m happy she called it out.  She knows all of her letters and the fact that she can recognize them anywhere, not just in context, is a great thing.  I just hope she never asks me what that H is for – sure I will say “oh that’s to tell us where the hospital is”, and then explain what a hospital is to the best of my ability. But that’s what the words will be outside my head. Inside my head it will be more like “that’s where Grandma died”.  I don’t know if I will ever say those words out loud to her, at least not while she’s young.

It’s easier to see that sign these days.  I don’t cry on seeing it and I didn’t cry today  – good progress made there, I think.

Today, I Need a Good Cry

 I actually thought to myself “did she ever really exist – it doesn’t feel like it because I can’t remember her face”.  Yesterday really kicked my ass and it’s continuing to hold on.

I went to my Dad’s house yesterday for Easter with my sister and Emily; my brother in law joined us a little later after we had started cooking; Rob was out of town, spending it with his ‘other’ family.  Yesterday was hard.  I think every holiday, every dinner will always be hard in that house.  I sit next to an empty chair where there’s a place-setting that won’t be used; yesterday I had to tell Emily that she can’t sit in Grandma’s seat – we keep it empty because that’s where she always sat, and we want to remember her. I cook in her pots – the ones she complained about that would ‘wiggle’ or ‘dance’ on the stove that she hated. Yesterday I told Emily that no, we don’t have to close the door to “that” room; it was Grandma’s room and we keep that door open.  It was the spare room that my Mom turned into her own little cave, with all of her books and movies stacked up, along with my Dad’s old recliner.  It’s a room that should be emptied, and I guess my sister thinks it’s time since she mentioned doing it but as ready as I am in most of my brain, there is still a part of me that’s saying “no, not yet”.  Yesterday, I didn’t expect her to come around the corner and complain about my Dad trying to clean up by himself and how she would have to rewash everything when he was done.  I didn’t expect her to sit next to me and drink the wine that she probably shouldn’t have had.  I didn’t expect her.  At the time, I guess I was just too occupied with making sure my kid didn’t rip the curtains off the wall but now, in hindsight it sucks.  Not that I wanted to feel like she was going to show up at any minute, but it sucks that I don’t expect her anymore.  That’s a bitter pill to swallow and a really big bump in the road that is this craptastically never-ending journey that I’m on.

Yesterday was hard because my toddler thought it would be a good day to defy every. Single. Instruction that I gave her.  Every single one.  When I asked her nicely to stop playing behind the curtains, after I heard some sound I couldn’t recognize, she said no (over and over) – I had to raise my voice, get out of my seat and attempt to pick her up in order to get her to come out.  I asked her to not run with something in her mouth, I had to take it away to get her to stop. I asked her to stop crawling around on the floor and when she said no, I took a breath and told myself to pick my battles.  I tried to hide at least twice from the yelling of my name – which seemed to be endless – but she found me easily in the small home.  I played with her, and that was good and it was fun. I laughed when she said “Momma, I like wine”.  But I also yelled, and I also took things away, and I also cried at the end of the day because I was exhausted.  Running after an almost three-year old in your dead mother’s house is exhausting on all levels.  I missed my mom yesterday.  Being there among her things, having to discipline my daughter every five minutes by myself, was just hard.  I know that if my mom had been there she would have watched Emily with me, she would have told her no just as loud if not louder than me and she would have been the first one to step in and take something away that she could have hurt herself with. But instead, it was all me. And it was hard to be there, missing her and having to do the job that I had to do.  Yesterday was just hard.

I keep trying to tell myself that today is a new day, today will be better, but I can’t seem to stop myself from wanting and needing to cry.  I cried last night, but I need to cry more in an effort to feel better.  But I can’t.  I have a job to do, which I’m at right now, and I have a child to take care of who thought it was a good idea to stomp her feet and grunt at me when I told her she couldn’t watch an entire show before we left for school today. Yesterday was hard, and it’s spilling over into today and making today hard too.  I’m not sure how to stop that cycle, but I wish I could figure it out because one bad day shouldn’t always equal two; but it usually does.