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.
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