I've been trying for weeks to write coherently about where I am and what I'm doing. And all I keep coming back to is this: I am living on my grandmother's couch, from which I can see my grandmother's hospital bed at all times. I am making three breakfasts a day, when necessary, and sleeping in 10- 25 minute bursts (finally, a practical use for my painsomnia!) and talking about what happened 75 years ago as if it were happening right now. And I am doing all of those things because my grandmother is dying.
Or she's not. (It depends on the day, really.)
And it's happening both too quickly and too slowly; too tenderly and too angrily; too neatly and too messily. And the rest of my life right now makes about as much sense as that previous sentence.
---
About two months ago, I started to get more worried than usual about my grandmother, because during our weekly visits and phone calls, she was saying things that made very little sense, her voice would get whispery or slurred, she'd go off on tangents about subjects we'd not been discussing, and, eventually she stopped being up for visits, and was ending our phone calls rather abruptly ~ sometimes in the middle of a sentence, she'd say "Well, give my love to everyone: talk to you next week", and hang up the phone. Now she's never been particularly skilled at using the phone (especially the newfangled cordless 'doohickey' my uncle installed for her a few years back), so this was strange, but not completely out of character. When I'd ask my uncle how she was, he'd say things that sort of glossed over my concerns - not addressing them so much as giving me a blanket "oh, it's been a bad day/week" and moving past it.
But enough things were happening that I was majorly concerned, so when he started ignoring my calls 3 times out of 5, and she stopped being available for even the slightest phone call, I decided it was serendipitous that the upstairs bathroom needed re-tiling at the exact moment that I needed to get into the house, and asked my uncle for refuge from the smells, hoping it would get my foot in the door here. I got that far in, and - aside from Tuesdays with the kids and a shower at home, and my own doctor's appointments - I haven't left since.
Because she wasn't just not feeling well: she was decidedly different. Failing. Stumbling over sharp edges and corners in conversations that should have gone smoothly. Sleeping all hours of the day, and getting her days and nights confused. Asking for dinner at 6:45 in the morning, demanding to know why we were starving her, even though she'd just eaten at midnight.
Her confusion is a live wire of a thing: you never know which Grandmother is going to wake up. The one who remembers who you are and how she used to lay you down to sleep on a quilt in the den while your mother went to school, or the one who thinks this place, the house she's lived in for 50 years and raised 9 children in, is a hotel or a hospital that you work in and that she'd like to check out of thank you very much. She could take a nap at noon and wake up around three, ready to sweep the porch and sit out in her rocker. Or she could stay awake till 4 in the morning, moaning because you've just told her that four of her sons are dead and she thinks it just happened right now.
"Humor her as much as possible" the hospice people say: If she tells you she sees her dead sister bustling around in her socks and assigning chores, play along if you can. If she thinks she's the charge nurse and is waiting for doctor's orders, let her wait till she gets tired and moves on. That's all good in theory, but in practice, it's having her call you a traitor because you knew that her brothers weren't really dead and you've been letting them hide here all this time and now won't bring them out to her. It's her giving you a dead-eyed stare for 30 minutes because she's sure that you've allowed her "little boys" to be sent away without her consent. It's handing her her purse 4 times in an hour, and helping her count and recount the same $197 dollars in cash she's had in there since May. It's eating steak and baked potatoes at 11:30 a m because she insists it's time for dinner.
Some of those things are doable, and others - because even in her confusion, she's no dope - are not. If she tells you she say a dog in the kitchen last night, and you play along, she wants to know who is feeding the dog, and where it is staying right now, and who allowed a dog in her kitchen in the first place, and aren't you allergic to dogs? And here is where my poor lying skills are put to the test, and where she sees through all my attempts to talk around the subject, and where, inevitably, one of us will wind up upset.
At first, my uncle assumed that this was a complication of one of the medications she was given for her fall down the stairs - she is particularly sensitive to pain meds, and the oxycodone made her hallucinate enough that the doctor took her off it immediately - but now she's been off those meds for months, and she is not improving. And we're remembering little things: like that fall down the stairs - what was she doing up, getting ready for church at 3:30 in the morning in the first place? Like all the conversations we've had to repeat because she didn't remember what we were talking about at all. Like how she seemed to forget that her son and nephew had both died last year, and we'd all assumed that it was just how she was grieving this time - that, having so much heaviness to bear, her brain had decided to remember it only when necessary, and to spare her most of the time. How even last year, maybe two years ago, our visits were getting shorter, and she was going less places, and sleeping more, and participating less, and all of the little things that seemed like just "oh my goodness she's going to be 95 years old, if she wants to go slower, cut her a break!" and now seem like "how did we miss that?"
I think he still assumes that the "confusion" will clear up, at least some - I'm the only one using the word dementia, and when I brought it up the first time, I might as well have punched myself in the face, for the look he gave me. But we both know - this is not normal, this is not getting better, this is not going away.
The hospice people were called in when her aftercare for the fall ran out: she still wasn't able to shower by herself or even get up the stairs very much, and her congestive heart failure was progressing to the point where she needed oxygen some of the time. So the hospice people came in, and keep coming in to help us, but they aren't here to stop anything from happening - just to make it easier on her - and us, I suppose - as it happens.
Her bed's been in the downstairs dining room since the fall (and by fall I mean both the tumble down the stairs and the season which it occurred), but now it's a hospital bed, and the room still has the look of a temporary, make-do space. Her clothes - the housecoats she wears everyday - are stacked on chairs and on the buffet, she doesn't have even a drawer down here she can call her own. I want to have things brought down, things she can recognize as part of her room, pictures or a bedside table, or something, but she still thinks she'll make it back upstairs, and my uncle sides with her (and is the only one of the three of us who can climb the stairs), so I am outnumbered.
I know I'm making some progress with him - he's started telling his brothers and sisters more of the truth when they call. Grandmother is good at pretending - on the phone or when the doctor/nurse/hospice person is here - that she's holding it together pretty well. And sometimes she is. But those times are getting fewer, and the times when she is not are getting more severe, and to say anything else at this point is straight out lying.
I've been avoiding cousins calls for weeks now, knowing that I have to say the truth, and not wanting the words to have to come out of my mouth. My brother knows now, my sisters: telling them was impossible - what do I say? She is not doing well, except for when she is fine. She needs the oxygen every day now, but sometimes it makes things so much better you wonder if it isn't fairy dust. Other times the cannula might as well be blocked, for all the good it does as you sit and watch her chest heave, hoping she catches the next breath. How do you explain that things are routine and desperate all at the same time? How do you get them to see that it is urgent, but not critical today, and that that may change by the time we finish our conversation?
I put such a look of fear on my brother's face, and I know that I feel it as well - The end is coming, and I can't stop it but at the same time, it's just an ordinary Tuesday here, with Grandmother lamenting the state of her curtains ("they never got washed for Christmas, and here it's Easter all ready" "No Grandmother: it's the 4th of July" "That's what I said: didn't I?" "Yes ma'am") and hoping that mail might be interesting. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, except for everything.
When I say that it's happening "too quickly and too slowly", I mean she would hate this, if she knew. She does hate it, when she realizes. Sometimes she has clarity, and those times are the worst, because she knows that she isn't clear the rest of the times - that her days are blanks and holes and that during those blanks and holes she may say things she doesn't mean.
"I hope you know how much I love you," she'll say when she's clear, as if to make up for all the times she'll forget who I am tomorrow, all the misunderstandings we'll have before she's clear again. She was never one to say that, not really: we all knew she loved us, but it wasn't her way to come out and say it. So it means all the more that she does it now. And I do know, I do.
But I don't know what to do, because most of the time I'm just sitting here. Doing the laundry and talking about the time her uncle was killed on the ferry to Staten Island, marking time. We make it through another day, and I write a big X on the calendar, because she's sure to ask me 17 times tomorrow what the date is, and if it's not marked off we'll have to argue about it, and above all, I'm trying to keep the peace. When she gets upset, her breathing gets worse, and she gets more confused, and it certainly isn't worth that worry, to remember the date.
I can watch her heart beat in her neck - the vein there bulges some, and it makes the skin expand like a bullfrog's sometimes when she's breathing too hard. Sometimes her whole chest caves in on a breath, and I hold mine while I wait for it to re inflate. Enough beats, enough bulges, and we make it through to another X, and I wonder what I'm doing here, when she seems OK, really: tired, sure & confused, but maybe I'm making too much of it. Maybe I'm worrying everybody and throwing off our whole summer plans and lives and she'll just keep ticking, just keep making it through the days.
It's not a waste, me being here, because I'm spending time with her, which has always been one of my favorite things, but is now also a strain at times; and I sit and listen to her worries - and oh boy does she have worries, she might be 89% worries at this point; and I make sure she doesn't tangle herself up in the sheets when she gets up to go to the bathroom 16 times during the night, but sometimes it feels like I've put everything on hold until the next horrible thing happens, and that's a terrible feeling.
Like I'm waiting for her to get worse, because I know she's not going to get better, and I wonder if she thinks that's why I'm here, because she can feel how worried I am sometimes, can read it on my face.
"Why are you so sad?" She'll ask me. When she asks me with my name, I can smile, and say "not sad, just tired", and have it be the truth. But sometimes she'll ask as if my being sad is part of some plot against her, or just another sign that she's dead and nobody told her, or yet another example of how we are all hiding things from her, and then I don't have the poker face to pull it off. And I hope I'm not making it worse, feeling sad, when she needs me to bring peace, so I suck it back in, and hope it doesn't leak out so much.
I feel like a float in the Macy's parade, I've got so much sucked in. Because today is Wednesday, July fourth and it's only 9:30 in the morning, and so far she's had a sandwich at 2:30, cookies and milk at 6:00, heard the doorbell ringing at 6:15. And we've talked about a non-existent trip to New York that nobody is making, the time in the 70s that she walked down to listen to the Pops with my two oldest cousins and they all danced in the street on the way home, and at least twice she's told me how to wash the windows when we take the curtains down today.
You know, at the end of those parades, a long time ago, they used to just cut the strings and let the floats drift away. I'm not sure I want to be around when the time comes to let all the sadness out, and floating away sounds heavenly right about now. But I'm here. And I'm sticking. And it sucks, and I wish I could write about it in a way that made logical sense, but it doesn't make logical sense, so we're stuck with this, pouring a little bit of the sadness and worry and stress out onto this page, so I can face going back in there and talking about the goddamn curtains again while I try not to count her pulse or monitor her breathing.
Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Thursday, August 26, 2010
I be back
Hey everybody: I know it's been a little while, but have no fear, I have not (as Crazed Mom has worried about) been a part of the blog-apocalypse or anything like that. Nope, it's just regular, end of summer, everybody has their vacation at one time, trying to cram experiences into the last few weeks before school starts mayhem.
I told y'all we'd be having some visitors, and boy howdy*, did we have visitors. My sister and her boys came for about a week, and Lil Girl and her brother decided to stay with us most of that week too, because their cousins were here. Which is awesome and wonderful, and I'm so happy that they (mostly) get along because there is such a wide range of ages (8 months to 14 years), and that could be bad news, but (mostly) works for them. One of my most cherished memories of my childhood summers is the week in August that my Virginia cousins would visit... I can remember crying every time they left and almost holding my breath every summer till it was time for them to come back. I'm so glad that my niece and nephews can have the same kind of connection (and, since Sister S's boys only live in New Hampshire, get to have more than one visit a year).
But that's not to say that it didn't take a lot out of me, and really made me realize that I am still - three months post-op - definitely still in a recovery phase. I just didn't have (what passes for) my normal level of stamina or strength, and, by the middle of the week, I was getting lots of concerned questions from both Sister S and Oldest Nephew. They kept asking if I was mad, which is the question I tend to get asked a lot if the pain is showing up on my face. I had to keep reassuring them that I wasn't mad (because I wasn't), just really, really sore. Since I have had 15 years of practice in covering up how badly I am feeling (particularly around the kids), it has to be pretty horrible for that much to be leaking out. I also don't necessarily think it was bad for it to be showing - Sister S, and her oldest boy, to some extent - still don't really "get" the whole chronic illness thing, mostly because they only briefly lived with me while I was ill. They don't quite understand how bad it can get, because I mostly hide it when they are here, so as not to put a damper on the visit. Which is possible on a weekend visit, or a day trip, but for a whole week? Never gonna happen. Eventually it catches up with me, and in this case, it was definitely sooner rather than later.
While they were here, we managed to get most of the whole immediate family crew together (minus Sister K who went to Montana with her boyfriend) for a little trek to a local old timey amusement park. It's a place that holds a lot of memories for most of us, as Nana (5th grade teacher extraordinaire) used to take her classes there on a field trip every year. She and the other chaperones would bring beach chairs and park under a giant willow tree, while the kids ran across the parking lot to the arcade with the warnings of "Absolutely no one goes to the beach!" and "If you don't come when I blow this whistle, we leave without you and you can explain to your parents why you didn't make the bus" ringing in their ears.
This trip we all had a great time, we took lots of pictures, and I will talk about it some more in a later picture filled post. But it was a really special day.
Added to that, I got a visit from College Roommate/ Best Friend, and her two little girls, who I haven't seen since before Christmas, because of various illnesses (on my part) and busy social calendars (on hers). We had a very nice visit, and definitely won't go so long this time in between. And then one of those fore mentioned Virginia cousins - who now lives in Maine - came down with her mom, husband and little boy and we had lunch together at Grandmother's house, with her kids and the kids my heart says are part mine running around in the yard while we - the grownups!?! - watched from the porch. It was pretty awesome, although I still really, really don't feel like a grownup.
So that's where I've been: visiting with sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews and best friends and their kids and Virginia cousins that now live in Maine, and taking field trips down memory lane. As exhausting, punishing and painful as it has been physically, it was definitely worth it. Although I am still recuperating - from both the summer and the stupid surgery - I'm glad that we got a chance to get everybody together, and that so many people I've been missing managed to make their way to me this summer.
Plus, now I have a ton of photos to edit, and some of them I actually love, so it's bonuses all around.
*I have no idea where the Southern accent came from: I apologize for the "boy howdy."
I told y'all we'd be having some visitors, and boy howdy*, did we have visitors. My sister and her boys came for about a week, and Lil Girl and her brother decided to stay with us most of that week too, because their cousins were here. Which is awesome and wonderful, and I'm so happy that they (mostly) get along because there is such a wide range of ages (8 months to 14 years), and that could be bad news, but (mostly) works for them. One of my most cherished memories of my childhood summers is the week in August that my Virginia cousins would visit... I can remember crying every time they left and almost holding my breath every summer till it was time for them to come back. I'm so glad that my niece and nephews can have the same kind of connection (and, since Sister S's boys only live in New Hampshire, get to have more than one visit a year).
But that's not to say that it didn't take a lot out of me, and really made me realize that I am still - three months post-op - definitely still in a recovery phase. I just didn't have (what passes for) my normal level of stamina or strength, and, by the middle of the week, I was getting lots of concerned questions from both Sister S and Oldest Nephew. They kept asking if I was mad, which is the question I tend to get asked a lot if the pain is showing up on my face. I had to keep reassuring them that I wasn't mad (because I wasn't), just really, really sore. Since I have had 15 years of practice in covering up how badly I am feeling (particularly around the kids), it has to be pretty horrible for that much to be leaking out. I also don't necessarily think it was bad for it to be showing - Sister S, and her oldest boy, to some extent - still don't really "get" the whole chronic illness thing, mostly because they only briefly lived with me while I was ill. They don't quite understand how bad it can get, because I mostly hide it when they are here, so as not to put a damper on the visit. Which is possible on a weekend visit, or a day trip, but for a whole week? Never gonna happen. Eventually it catches up with me, and in this case, it was definitely sooner rather than later.
While they were here, we managed to get most of the whole immediate family crew together (minus Sister K who went to Montana with her boyfriend) for a little trek to a local old timey amusement park. It's a place that holds a lot of memories for most of us, as Nana (5th grade teacher extraordinaire) used to take her classes there on a field trip every year. She and the other chaperones would bring beach chairs and park under a giant willow tree, while the kids ran across the parking lot to the arcade with the warnings of "Absolutely no one goes to the beach!" and "If you don't come when I blow this whistle, we leave without you and you can explain to your parents why you didn't make the bus" ringing in their ears.
This trip we all had a great time, we took lots of pictures, and I will talk about it some more in a later picture filled post. But it was a really special day.
Added to that, I got a visit from College Roommate/ Best Friend, and her two little girls, who I haven't seen since before Christmas, because of various illnesses (on my part) and busy social calendars (on hers). We had a very nice visit, and definitely won't go so long this time in between. And then one of those fore mentioned Virginia cousins - who now lives in Maine - came down with her mom, husband and little boy and we had lunch together at Grandmother's house, with her kids and the kids my heart says are part mine running around in the yard while we - the grownups!?! - watched from the porch. It was pretty awesome, although I still really, really don't feel like a grownup.
So that's where I've been: visiting with sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews and best friends and their kids and Virginia cousins that now live in Maine, and taking field trips down memory lane. As exhausting, punishing and painful as it has been physically, it was definitely worth it. Although I am still recuperating - from both the summer and the stupid surgery - I'm glad that we got a chance to get everybody together, and that so many people I've been missing managed to make their way to me this summer.
Plus, now I have a ton of photos to edit, and some of them I actually love, so it's bonuses all around.
*I have no idea where the Southern accent came from: I apologize for the "boy howdy."
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Let's talk a little
My mind lately seems to be going at about triple it's normal speed. Frantic, speed-brain, for some reason. It's strange, really, because things are relatively calm (or what passes for it in my family anyways), and yet I can't get my stupid brain to slow down long enough for me to grip on to anything. Or - alternately - I get hold of something and just can't let it go.
July started off OK - I even took the month off from doctors, because all the news was bad and painful and just more of the same and I couldn't think about it anymore. But of course it hasn't stopped me from thinking about it: At the very least though, by taking the time off, I couldn't be poked or prodded or asked stupid questions about it anymore.
And then my brother and sister-in-law took the kids to the Cape for a week, and were too lazy to drive them up for a few days before that, and all of the "good summer fun with the kids" I had planned to cram into my month (and my mind) instead turned into "days of doing nothing but sitting around thinking about my life." These days were not nearly as much fun as the ones I had anticipated. Left with entirely too much time to ponder at least two major family situations (one of which has blown over and another that continues on without any solution to be seen), my own non-improving health and relationships situations, and the fact that yesterday was the anniversary of my father's death (not to mention a very rude person who treated it as if, because my father and I did not get along, this anniversary should be pretty meaningless to me); it's been an unexpectedly emotional time. There's just all this stuff, and I feel like I need energy to sift through it, and I haven't got the energy - emotional or physical - that god gave a gnat, so it's all heavy lifting.
It's all heavy lifting.
And I don't, as usual, realize how heavy, really, until I sit here with my fingers tapping away trying to explain why I haven't posted anything lately, or taken pictures of the gorgeous kids or why I've signed up for at least three projects this summer that I haven't even begun to consider, let alone start. Until I sit here and let my fingers start talking, I let my brain rev itself up into a frenzy, and don't realize that not saying anything, not posting anything is part of the trouble.
So here's some more of what I've been toting around, this week particularly -
We've been attempting to clean out Nana's storage: Yes, 2 years is a long time to pay storage fees, but when you roll up that door and the smell - her smell - hits you, I would gladly pay for another two years just to not have to sit there and sift through the contents of her life while my uncle - who is clueless - natters on about "Goodwill" and "Junk" and my mother and aunt try to move as quickly as possible so we can just leave already, and all I want to do is sit there with a box of stuff opened around me and absorb it into my skin. I've been taking pictures and saving things from the scrap bin; trying to hold all my emotions in in case my mom needs to let hers out.
I'm in that tiny little hallway, with it's concrete floors and neon orange doors, watching as box after box after box comes out. When my uncle pops out one of the windows on my grandmother's dollhouse (they're plastic and pop back in), I bite my tongue and control my need to scream about how important it is to fix it Right Away! I watch my aunt take a box of china she shouldn't be lifting and wrap it up so clumsily that it's sure to be in pieces the next time we open the box, but I don't say anything: I just wait till she turns around and slide the box in my direction, re-wrap it when she heads out for a cigarette. When my mom opens a box with baby shoes in it - shoes that Nana had lovingly wrapped in tissue paper, for her 'baby' who died twenty years before she did - mom doesn't cry, so I don't cry.
See, I know that this stuff is not my Nana, and that - in all honesty - she couldn't really have cared about the majority of it: glasses that lived in cabinets, tea sets made of gold that never made it to the table, knickknacks from places she never traveled to, lots of things that said 'grandma' because stuff that said 'nana' was so much harder to find. She wouldn't mind if we tossed all that out, would actually have done it herself if she'd have thought about us having to do it now.
But I also know that there are memories to be found here - not just my memories, but everyones - and so I feel like I have to safeguard them - for my mom, who isn't thinking anything except "get me out of here"; for all the grandchildren who can't be in that dark little hallway with me, and for all the great grandchildren - here now and to come - who never got a chance to know just how awesome a lady they missed out on.
So I sit there, allergies acting all renegade and body too sore to take breaths, it seems, setting aside a porcelain cat for one sister, a rogue leprechaun for my brother, a picture of himself that my cousin has probably never seen. Some of this stuff means something to me, some of it doesn't but I'm determined not to let the "one thing" that somebody would have wanted get tossed in a box for Goodwill. I feel like the only person there capable of remembering that this isn't just stuff, it has value to someone, and they should at least have the chance to say "No, you can toss that" or "Oh my god, I totally remember this!" So I click the shutter on my camera again and again and again, hoping that I'm capturing the something somebody wants, before I repack the boxes and watch my uncle roll his eyes again.
It's just heavy lifting.
And I try to be gentle with myself, try to say: Even though it doesn't seem like right now is a busy time, you are doing a lot of work. But it doesn't always sink in, because part of my heavy lifting is the way I think about myself, the way I don't give myself credit for the things that I do, the way I beat up on myself for all the things I don't do. It's a tricky line, I think - to hold yourself accountable without tearing yourself apart. (At least it is for me.)
I read, somewhere, in a recent blog post of somebody's, that one of the rules to remember in blogging is that your blog is not your best friend. If you feel like you need to vent, pick up the phone, don't complain to your audience or they'll stop coming back. I think that's probably good advice, but I don't know that I can follow it. I appreciate it, honestly, with my whole heart, that you people come back time and again to read things like this, where my head is a spinning top and my heart feels cracked open.
I won't say that I don't have people in my life who would listen, if I started talking, because I do, but it's different to write it here, freer somehow. Saying what I need to say to get my head back on straight is a large part of what's kept me writing for so long at this blog, and - while it may be the reason I don't have a zillion followers - it's also part of the reason that I cherish the followers I do have.
So, now that I feel somewhat normal again, what's going on with you all? I know somebody has a new job (YAY Ms J!!!) and other people are dealing with their own brands of chaos (Hope the bed rest is going well, Laurie!). I hope that you're all enjoying your weekend, come what may, and I promise to write again soon. (And less emotionally jumbled, hopefully.)
July started off OK - I even took the month off from doctors, because all the news was bad and painful and just more of the same and I couldn't think about it anymore. But of course it hasn't stopped me from thinking about it: At the very least though, by taking the time off, I couldn't be poked or prodded or asked stupid questions about it anymore.
And then my brother and sister-in-law took the kids to the Cape for a week, and were too lazy to drive them up for a few days before that, and all of the "good summer fun with the kids" I had planned to cram into my month (and my mind) instead turned into "days of doing nothing but sitting around thinking about my life." These days were not nearly as much fun as the ones I had anticipated. Left with entirely too much time to ponder at least two major family situations (one of which has blown over and another that continues on without any solution to be seen), my own non-improving health and relationships situations, and the fact that yesterday was the anniversary of my father's death (not to mention a very rude person who treated it as if, because my father and I did not get along, this anniversary should be pretty meaningless to me); it's been an unexpectedly emotional time. There's just all this stuff, and I feel like I need energy to sift through it, and I haven't got the energy - emotional or physical - that god gave a gnat, so it's all heavy lifting.
It's all heavy lifting.
And I don't, as usual, realize how heavy, really, until I sit here with my fingers tapping away trying to explain why I haven't posted anything lately, or taken pictures of the gorgeous kids or why I've signed up for at least three projects this summer that I haven't even begun to consider, let alone start. Until I sit here and let my fingers start talking, I let my brain rev itself up into a frenzy, and don't realize that not saying anything, not posting anything is part of the trouble.
So here's some more of what I've been toting around, this week particularly -
We've been attempting to clean out Nana's storage: Yes, 2 years is a long time to pay storage fees, but when you roll up that door and the smell - her smell - hits you, I would gladly pay for another two years just to not have to sit there and sift through the contents of her life while my uncle - who is clueless - natters on about "Goodwill" and "Junk" and my mother and aunt try to move as quickly as possible so we can just leave already, and all I want to do is sit there with a box of stuff opened around me and absorb it into my skin. I've been taking pictures and saving things from the scrap bin; trying to hold all my emotions in in case my mom needs to let hers out.
I'm in that tiny little hallway, with it's concrete floors and neon orange doors, watching as box after box after box comes out. When my uncle pops out one of the windows on my grandmother's dollhouse (they're plastic and pop back in), I bite my tongue and control my need to scream about how important it is to fix it Right Away! I watch my aunt take a box of china she shouldn't be lifting and wrap it up so clumsily that it's sure to be in pieces the next time we open the box, but I don't say anything: I just wait till she turns around and slide the box in my direction, re-wrap it when she heads out for a cigarette. When my mom opens a box with baby shoes in it - shoes that Nana had lovingly wrapped in tissue paper, for her 'baby' who died twenty years before she did - mom doesn't cry, so I don't cry.
See, I know that this stuff is not my Nana, and that - in all honesty - she couldn't really have cared about the majority of it: glasses that lived in cabinets, tea sets made of gold that never made it to the table, knickknacks from places she never traveled to, lots of things that said 'grandma' because stuff that said 'nana' was so much harder to find. She wouldn't mind if we tossed all that out, would actually have done it herself if she'd have thought about us having to do it now.
But I also know that there are memories to be found here - not just my memories, but everyones - and so I feel like I have to safeguard them - for my mom, who isn't thinking anything except "get me out of here"; for all the grandchildren who can't be in that dark little hallway with me, and for all the great grandchildren - here now and to come - who never got a chance to know just how awesome a lady they missed out on.
So I sit there, allergies acting all renegade and body too sore to take breaths, it seems, setting aside a porcelain cat for one sister, a rogue leprechaun for my brother, a picture of himself that my cousin has probably never seen. Some of this stuff means something to me, some of it doesn't but I'm determined not to let the "one thing" that somebody would have wanted get tossed in a box for Goodwill. I feel like the only person there capable of remembering that this isn't just stuff, it has value to someone, and they should at least have the chance to say "No, you can toss that" or "Oh my god, I totally remember this!" So I click the shutter on my camera again and again and again, hoping that I'm capturing the something somebody wants, before I repack the boxes and watch my uncle roll his eyes again.
It's just heavy lifting.
And I try to be gentle with myself, try to say: Even though it doesn't seem like right now is a busy time, you are doing a lot of work. But it doesn't always sink in, because part of my heavy lifting is the way I think about myself, the way I don't give myself credit for the things that I do, the way I beat up on myself for all the things I don't do. It's a tricky line, I think - to hold yourself accountable without tearing yourself apart. (At least it is for me.)
I read, somewhere, in a recent blog post of somebody's, that one of the rules to remember in blogging is that your blog is not your best friend. If you feel like you need to vent, pick up the phone, don't complain to your audience or they'll stop coming back. I think that's probably good advice, but I don't know that I can follow it. I appreciate it, honestly, with my whole heart, that you people come back time and again to read things like this, where my head is a spinning top and my heart feels cracked open.
I won't say that I don't have people in my life who would listen, if I started talking, because I do, but it's different to write it here, freer somehow. Saying what I need to say to get my head back on straight is a large part of what's kept me writing for so long at this blog, and - while it may be the reason I don't have a zillion followers - it's also part of the reason that I cherish the followers I do have.
So, now that I feel somewhat normal again, what's going on with you all? I know somebody has a new job (YAY Ms J!!!) and other people are dealing with their own brands of chaos (Hope the bed rest is going well, Laurie!). I hope that you're all enjoying your weekend, come what may, and I promise to write again soon. (And less emotionally jumbled, hopefully.)
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
I know the internet doesn't care
about the heat, but my body does. Other things it cares about that I would rather it didn't: the smell of food cooking in neighbor's yards; the smell of photos that have been living in a smoking house for 30 years; the smell of low tide, over a mile away; any smells, ever, in my immediate vicinity; our new summer schedule with the kids (MWF); the damn sun; every movement I have to make; about a thousand other things.
I find that I am easily, easily frustrated right now, and I hate it: I feel whiny and petulant and ungrateful. Nothing is horrifically wrong - nothing new is happening, and yet, the fact that my face isn't better, the fact that I'm too exhausted to help the kids check things off our "Stuff we want to do this summer" checklist, the fact that the incessant humming drone of the air conditioner is driving me batty - it's all making me feel cranky.
We don't have the kiddos till Friday this week, since their parents have some vacation days this week, and so I've little distraction from my crankiness, and that makes me feel even more ridiculous, because I'm depending on a 10 year old and a 4 year old to distract me. They are a great distraction, though...
You wouldn't know it by this post, but we've had to declare this the Summer of No Whining at our house, because Lil Girl is smack in the middle of a very whiny phase. (Says the woman who just whine-typed for five minutes straight. Does it count if it's on the internet?) She's catching on pretty quickly - since we can't hear whining, she doesn't get what she wants, so she changes her strategies swiftly.
Aside from the whining - and fights over who gets to sit where in the car that I remember all too well from my own childhood, and NOW I get why we all eventually had assigned seats - they've been great so far. They usually are, but now that they're getting older, we're trying to schedule more outings... having them (and us) all cooped up in the house all day everyday is just asking for trouble.
Last week I sat on the bandstand at the beach while Mum and the children wandered around looking for shells and rocks (They brought home quite the collection). We watched planes come in (Logan's right past the beach), had lunch, blew bubbles, and decided to come back for ice cream next time.
It was a pretty great day.
I was going to add a "but" to that last sentence, but I'd rather not: No more whining. Besides, it was a pretty great day, and I need to remember that part, let the rest of it all go. Let the Summer of No Whining commence, and help me to remember that it applies to grown ups and not just four-year-olds.
I find that I am easily, easily frustrated right now, and I hate it: I feel whiny and petulant and ungrateful. Nothing is horrifically wrong - nothing new is happening, and yet, the fact that my face isn't better, the fact that I'm too exhausted to help the kids check things off our "Stuff we want to do this summer" checklist, the fact that the incessant humming drone of the air conditioner is driving me batty - it's all making me feel cranky.
We don't have the kiddos till Friday this week, since their parents have some vacation days this week, and so I've little distraction from my crankiness, and that makes me feel even more ridiculous, because I'm depending on a 10 year old and a 4 year old to distract me. They are a great distraction, though...
You wouldn't know it by this post, but we've had to declare this the Summer of No Whining at our house, because Lil Girl is smack in the middle of a very whiny phase. (Says the woman who just whine-typed for five minutes straight. Does it count if it's on the internet?) She's catching on pretty quickly - since we can't hear whining, she doesn't get what she wants, so she changes her strategies swiftly.
Aside from the whining - and fights over who gets to sit where in the car that I remember all too well from my own childhood, and NOW I get why we all eventually had assigned seats - they've been great so far. They usually are, but now that they're getting older, we're trying to schedule more outings... having them (and us) all cooped up in the house all day everyday is just asking for trouble.
Last week I sat on the bandstand at the beach while Mum and the children wandered around looking for shells and rocks (They brought home quite the collection). We watched planes come in (Logan's right past the beach), had lunch, blew bubbles, and decided to come back for ice cream next time.
It was a pretty great day.
I was going to add a "but" to that last sentence, but I'd rather not: No more whining. Besides, it was a pretty great day, and I need to remember that part, let the rest of it all go. Let the Summer of No Whining commence, and help me to remember that it applies to grown ups and not just four-year-olds.
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