Current location:	Teetering over...
Current mood:	sad
Current music:	doves and kids playing outside...tis a nice sound :)
Entry tags:	grieving

Strange things about a lost loved one...
Nothing, you know...important. If you can't handle intense sad stuff then don't proceed. I just need to get this out somewhere. Love and hugs to you all but don't expect me to be able to reply to this till next weekend when school's out.

I can't use grandma's bathroom on the first floor. Even though it means I have to hike to the second or third floor when I'm desperate to go. Because it was her bathroom and I feel guilty like I'm mooching after someone after they're dead...

I can't stop thinking about what her dead body looked like. Huge but regal. It's weird. And now there is a painful note to home itself--to my hometown, where we drove for her funeral and burial, because it's like...whoever said you can't go home again...not to the exact same home at least...they might have been correct. When one life is removed, even if that life ascends to paradise, those of us still stuck on this sometimes grueling earth feel an incredible hole...in the middle of the chest...in all the little places she and I drove and walked...in the things we talked about...an incredibly throbbing hole. And it feels like it'd be fickle to let go of that pain just yet. Fickle and shallow.

I was stumbling between rooms last night in the middle of the night to get something, and I bumbled right into a bunch of her old clothes hung up. I let out this gasp or gurgle or ...I dunno something...and started crying and couldn't stop...it's like when we were taking out her chair that she always sat on, and her mattress...I grabbed onto the chair and started sobbing. My mom had to pry me off it and drag it the rest of the way to the garbage in the garage by herself. I really snapped, for some reason...much more than when I went to her funeral and military salute at the grave.

I will find myself fine for hours on end and then suddenly I come across a piece of jewelry she gave me, or a picture, or a food she loved, or a memory triggered by a smell or sight, and suddenly I am in a ball sobbing again. The change is like ten seconds or less. And then I push it back again. But I wonder how long it will be before those episodes of intense grief subside.

Sometimes I genuinely forget she's gone, and think she's still in the nursing home that they put her in for only a couple of weeks. Or I will catch myself thinking she's in the other room and if I just wait long enough she'll come out and hobble to me and be herself again.

I wonder if I said I love you enough. I wonder if she thought I didn't anymore, because I was always so busy or sick or tired right before she died. I wonder if I've failed her miserably.

I catch myself fearfully watching my mom sleep now too. Once she's gone I'm alone. I am so scared. And when her breathing seems to shallow I wake her up, at like four am. It annoys her but I can't get over the fear.

I'm popping Xanax and Ativan every four hours. Sometimes I can be free of taking them for up to three days, even four, at a time, but usually I have to take one then. My doctor says it's not addiction because I'm not showing any withdrawal symptoms, but what bothers me is it's KILLING my short term memory, my ability to focus, and my emotions, aside a sort of dull depressed crying sort of thing. It embarrasses me. Somehow I'm doing really well in classes still, but the duhhh ness embarasses me.

My best friend who lives in town keeps saying, "You can travel more now, you don't have to worry about a curfew to stress your grandma anymore, your mom can be free of that burden now," and while she means it lovingly, it shows how even well-intended friends mispercieve how exquisitely painful this is. It's probably because they haven't lost someone that close to them yet. But damn. Sometimes I want to say, "No, that's not it...try to understand how it REALLY feels for me. Just because I'm smiling doesn't mean I'm okay."

I fear what will happen once I am out of school and have time to really dwell on this loss. I fear it deeply. I don't know what will happen...I can recognize how intense my feelings are under the surface. I am so scared of going it alone. People that I love dearly are avoiding me, perhaps even angry at me, and I don't know how that happened. People that I am used to always having around. Maybe they feel they've already done all they can for me. Maybe they feel they are insufficient to help me (I don't know how they could think that, because there are few people who have ever been so good at making me feel like I can survive and like I have hope simply by their being present in my life). I am aware that I will need to address several individuals soon about all this, and try to gently get them to understand that when we are grieving, we have different needs than when we are doing fairly okay.

All of these things are just killing me. I just want people to understand how much it hurts, but that I am still me and I will get through this, and that nothing thrills me more, even now, than being there for my family and friends. I hope that's clear.

I'm just gonna close this with this song:


"It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
It's just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve...
for you
You leave...
Me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
Said life carries on...
Carries on and on and on...
And on
The news that truly shocks
is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
Its empty, empty cage...
And I can't handle this
I GRIEVE...
FOR YOU
YOU LEAVE...
ME
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
Still life carries on...
I said life carries on and on...
And on
Life carries on in the people I meet
In every one that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the road and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on...
And on
Life carries on and on and on...
Life carries on and on and on...
And on
Life carries on and on and on...
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on...
And on
Life carries on and on and on...
Did I dream this belief
Or did I believe this dream
How I will find relief
I grieve..."
~Peter Gabriel