Earlier today, my uncle passed away from cancer - only the exact timing of it was a surprise, but it's still been... I don't even know, just horrible. And my grandmother, who does not know, obviously knows something is up and is tantruming right and left, while my uncle, who's grieving the loss of his 5th brother in the past decade or so, has about zero patience left over for her, so ... it's been a challenge. The far away cousin I am closest to messaged me and said "Sending my love - hope you are all ok", and this well... this is what came out.
Honestly, Two Shoes? It's a goddamn mess here.
Like, you know how I don't really curse, and all my truck driver-mouthed sisters make fun of me? Well if they could hear the inside of my brain right now, they'd be so proud. (And shocked, because I happen to have an extensive foreign vocabulary :) )
I don't really know anything, except that he had the last rites this morning, Katie called to see if Gmother or UJ would like to try to talk to him via the speaker phone, and gmother is in 1967 or somewhere, trying to find her "lost boys" so I just gave the phone to UJ and left him with some privacy. He was going to try to drive down, but she called back less than 1/2 hour later and said he was gone. She sounded... well: you and I both have intimate experience with how she sounded, and I just wanted to crawl through the phone and tell her .... I don't know what, except how much I'm so damn sorry. And then we called the social worker, and the priest, who both said: don't tell grandmother, at least not today.
Today was a bad day to begin with, and if we tried to tell her, well: we'd be the cruel monsters she sometimes thinks UJ is when he tells her any of the other true things about her boys. We always go with the "they're safe, they're where they need to be" track that the hospice tells us to follow, but some days she knows that's not true, she knows so many of them are gone, but to her they are both gone and still little boys, and so she is not buying what we're selling, and maybe it's the phone constantly ringing or my face, or UJ's posture, but she ain't buying it today. She knows something is off, and so down the wormhole we go, trying to anticipate what bomb will go off in her mind next. Today the refrigerator was smoking, UJ had abandoned her, the lost boys purposely ran away because she isn't a part of this family anymore... just: she's not herself.
And I promised myself that I would wait, and vent on you when your vacation was over, because ... well, VACATION. And I don't want to see her like this, and I hate having to tell other people that she's like this, because she'd be fucking pissed. I mean: you know. You know.
So I figured, well, I'll just be avoid-ish and vague and hope that things get better (because I've been doing - shocker - a hell of a lot of research, and I think/hope I can figure out at least ways to make this a little less hellish for all of us) and by the time we talked next, it'd be calmer and less horrible, and Grandmother wouldn't curse at me or ask me to call 911 to find invisible children, but ... things keep going wrong, and here we are, and now she's lost a real boy, and I can't tell her, and my heart is just broken for all of us.
It's a heart broken day, and they're not all like this: I promise. Some days she's herself and I get to hear stories about how my father was told by some idiot down the street to stop climbing a tree in the park and came back with "It's not your tree, so mind your business." and even though grandmother expects me to be shocked by that, and be on the adult's side, I think he was right, and secretly smile.
Some days we spend all night emptying drawers and refilling them, looking for some small part of her life that she can't describe to me, but she knows is there somewhere... so we search. That's one of the rare times I feel like I'm actually accomplishing something here: because UJ does not have the patience for those hours of searching, let me tell you, and I don't mind if we go through the drawer 19 times (has he never built with blocks and a 18 month old before: dump and fill, dump and fill)
And other days are like today, which is worse than normal because a)obviously, Uncle Kevin and b)during my research I found out that the meds the doc has given us for her anxiety might actually be making other symptoms worse, so we can't use it anymore. So let's have the MOST ANXIOUS DAY EVER (for all three of us) and no calming down meds for grandmother, and neither uj or I can drink. (Send me special brownies ;) ~ we already stress ate 3 dozen cookies since yesterday morning.) So, hence: I am sorry to ruin your vacation.
But I can picture you reading this, and listening to me, and it does my heart good just to have it said (because I've been wanting to call, but honestly, getting on the phone in private here is harder than getting home to shower - and I haven't done that in over a week, so that shows that), to know that, even though it'll break your heart too (and I'm so damn sorry that I have to be the one to do that), I can feel you, loving us, from far away. I'm going to take all those hugs, and send some back to you, and NOT erase the whole damn thing, because you're on vacation, even though I feel kind of like I should. Cuz I love you, and I really appreciate the shoulder, and I need it a lot today.
Hugs to your boys, I suppose I'll be seeing you soon, although ... i don't know how that's going to work because well... i haven't thought that far ahead yet. But anyways... I love you. Thanks for listening . Miss you much, Love, Me
