Life Goes On

Saturday night was tough. I couldn't sleep. This doesn't happen daily but as I get older, it happens more often. My mind wasn't racing. In fact, I couldn't actually 'think' about anything for any consistent amount of time and no bad song lyrics (or good ones for that matter) were stuck on repeat in my head. I wasn't feeling any specific emotion, except of course, frustration because I couldn't sleep. I wasn't anxious, over tired, restless, sad, mad, happy. I just couldn't sleep.

I've tried different techniques to fall asleep and sometimes they work but this night, nothing seemed to. Sometimes all it takes is a change of room...the guest room, the family room...a room that's different...and I can fall asleep but that didn't even work Saturday night.

My son had the same problem that night as well because at 4 AM he was tapping on my shoulder telling me he couldn't sleep. We decided to go to the family room and hang out together. I guess quality time is quality time regardless of the actual hour, right?

Sadly, my son's favorite channel is the Military Channel and I was subjected to two hours of a WWII documentary. I'm by no means a war or military buff but I suffered through it for the sake of my son. Finally, at 6 AM I decided to see if my favorite Starbucks was opened and we headed out. Sadly, it wasn't. Instead my son and I went to McDonald's so he could have breakfast while I watched and waited for the Starbucks doors to unlock.

Sitting in that McDonald's reminded me of the times I would go there with my father for breakfast. He loved McDonald's breakfasts. Until of course, his heart attack and then he wasn't allowed to go more than rarely. While my son sat and ate, I felt a wave of sadness come over me. I started to miss my dad. I always miss him but as time goes on, the sadness fades and life continues. Sometimes it creeps up on me and I start to feel this overwhelming sense of loss and it takes me a few minutes to get it under control...to be able to breathe normally again. No one really notices it, especially my son, thankfully. It seems silly that a simple trip to McDonald's would open the hole losing my dad has left in my heart but it's really those little things that impact me the most. I think that's what everyone says when they've lost someone they love but it never really seems true until you experience it yourself.

Because, as we all know, life goes on.

That's the part about losing someone that frustrates me now, at this stage of my losses. Life goes on. There is this big empty space in my heart...in my soul and I feel the loss so strongly but it's my personal loss. As I sat in that McDonald's with my son, I realized that while my parents, in my eyes, were the most amazing people to grace this earth, not everyone else thought that or even knew them. In fact, more people than not had no clue they even existed. The people in that McDonald's continued through their days and that day in particular, without my parents in their lives and weren't even phased by that while I sat there feeling a loss so profound and intense I couldn't breathe.

Life goes on. People wake up and do what they do every day. Buses take kids to school. Trains move masses of people to and from, to and from. Planes fly. Starbucks continues to make coffee (and thank God for that). Spring has even sprung here in Atlanta and we're already heading into summer. Life goes on. All without my dad and my mom.

Sitting in that McDonald's, I realized the unfairness of that. Life goes on even though the world lost two amazing people and it seems as if their mark on the world is gone now, too. Sure they have family to carry on. Little bits of their DNA are moving through the world but for me, that's not enough. It's all I've got but still, it's not enough. I realize most people feel this way when they lose someone they love and I know it's the way the world works but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I just can't comprehend that my parents are gone and every day goes on just like the day before. I'm doing a lousy job of explaining it. I guess the best I can say is that sometimes, like in that McDonald's, I want to stand up and scream at the top of my lungs, "My parents are dead and you're walking around like the world is the same but it's not!" Because for me, the world is different and it will never be the same.

The world for me is now the world of 'after my parents died' instead of the 'before my parents died' world.

I'm not sad every day anymore. Like I said, it comes and goes and that physical pain in my chest...that inability to breathe...that feeling of total helplessness, it's all gone. I spend most of my days happy and can think about my parents without feeling sad. That's progress for me and I feel I'm moving forward in my grief but every so often it slaps me in the face and I'm shocked to realize
that it's actually true, my parents are dead.

I thought maybe writing this would resolve something for me. That maybe I'd understand the feeling better but I don't. Life still goes on and there is still a sense of loss for me and a slight feeling of anger that no one else in the world really notices the difference. The sun still shines and the wind still blows but for me, everything is just a little different now. Not bad or worse, just different.

A Revelation of Sorts...

Ever had one of those light bulbs go off over top of your head? Okay, I'm talking figuratively, not in the literal sense. I've had a few and though most haven't been life-altering, some have certainly come close. Take the most recent one. It hit home more like a brick to the head instead of a light bulb above it but I think that was my higher power trying to make a point.

For years I have said "I'm prepared for my parents to die" and I meant it. I truly believed that and still do. Both mom and dad have never taken great care of themselves and I firmly believe that had it not been for my (step)mother, my father would already be gone. Truth be told, I never thought my mother would beat him to Heaven. Their ill health and lack of desire to improve it have kept me reality based. I knew they would die at some point. Everything dies. Isn't that something we learn at some point in our childhood? So yes, I was completely prepared for my mother's death. What I was not prepared for however, was my mother to be dead. There's the light bulb moment.

Make sense?

My point is that I was ready for her to physically pass. I didn't want her to be in pain and I didn't want her to suffer, even just a little. I know she didn't want to so I accepted her decision not to fight her cancer (it wouldn't have mattered anyway)and did what I could to keep her comfortable in her last months. I was with her as she literally took her last breath and I knew it was her last. I could feel it in my bones.

Looking back, all of that was the easy part. The hard part is the now. The time after the dying. The dead part. I was not and am still not prepared for my mother to be dead.

I don't know exactly what I was thinking through her last few months because I know I didn't want her to die and I did think about what it would be like when she was gone but the problem with that is you can't really know. You think you know but you don't. So now I spend my days doing whatever it is I have to do with this huge monkey on my back. My mom is dead. Gone. Forever. And while I believe in Heaven and I feel, in my heart of hearts that I will see her again, I struggle with the "what if?" of it all. I was not prepared for her to be dead.

I wasn't prepared for the empty, lonely feeling one has when they go to pick up the phone to call their mom and realize they can't. I wasn't prepared for packing up her clothes for Goodwill and not being able to smell her because I'm so damn anal retentive and washed her clothes all of the time. I wasn't prepared to be fine one minute and a crumbled, emotional wreck the next.

I wasn't prepared for most everyone to not understand. I wasn't prepared for my husband to have the need to fix things and make me instantly better. Though truthfully, I should have expected that. I wasn't prepared to have to talk about this on other people's terms because honestly, death is ugly and people don't really want to know how you're feeling. They ask to feel good about themselves but they don't want the truth. As Jack Nicholas says, "You can't handle the truth". It's true. Unless you have lost a parent or someone at that level of closeness to you, you cannot possible understand. Sure, you think you can but you can't. Someday you will but don't pretend because us grievers, we can see through it. We're in the know and you simply aren't. Thanks for trying but a simple, "I'm sorry" is much better than anything else you can say.

I wasn't prepared for the realization that I will spend probably more than half of my life without my mom. Today I spoke to a friend whose mother died last year. She's 60 years old and said, "I know I should feel lucky that I had my mom for 60 years but I don't. It wasn't enough time." You can never have enough time with the people you love. I suspect we'll all feel cheated each time someone we love dies. It's the way our hearts work, I guess.

I've spent the last month and a half not interested in a whole lot of anything. For several years I used a lot of emotional and physical energy to care for my mom and now I have this huge empty space and honestly, I don't know what the hell to do with it. Most everything that used to be important to me, isn't now. My 60 year old friend told me today it will be again and that it just takes time. She said to cut myself some slack but I've never been good at that.

I know my mother wouldn't want me to feel this way but really, when have I truly done what my mom wanted? Why change now, you know? I don't want to shock her or anything! Personally, I don't want to feel this way either and have been smacking myself in the head trying to figure out how to move forward but I'm not sure it's something I can make happen. I think it's a process and I have to work through it. I do know that I have to force myself to do things, like exercise and stop eating everything I see. I feel better when I exercise and I berate myself for not eating properly so having these things not going how they should just makes things harder. I keep telling myself I'll work on them, tomorrow. Yet tomorrow comes and I sit and try to figure out who I am now that I'm Carolyn-without-a-mom. I don't like it and I'm really sick of feeling this way. Tomorrow I will start to do right by myself. Or so I say.

I have learned that while 'death' itself is a process and an experience, in this case, it's not mine, it's my mom's. She died. Her death is about her and not about what it has done or is doing to me. She owns it and she's gone from this place to another and I'm pretty sure she's all right with that. I'm not angry and I'm not bitter. I haven't felt the resentment some feel and I haven't bargained for her to 'return' or to feel better. Again, it would require me to give a rats butt and I just don't much care about anything. But while her dying is about her, her being dead is about me and that is something I have to find a way to accept. Though accept might not be the right word. I accept that she is dead. Hard not to accept the obvious, right? I just have to learn to live with the obvious. It's a different life for me and as with anything new, I'm still trying to work my way through it.

When I get to where ever it is I'm supposed to get, if I do, I'll let you know.