I’m not sure where my emotions last evening came from. I was experiencing anger at the universe for taking away over 8 months of my last 11 years… more days that are in 8 months… that’s how many days I’ve had a parent in the hospital. I am filled with despair at the situation where has no pleasant outcomes as options. I am anger at myself for engaging in self-pity when neither of my parents asked for the roles to which fate has assigned them. I am embarrassed that I get so mad at either of them—but mostly Mom—and play the ‘what if” games thinking that if we’d done something different along the way we wouldn’t all be so miserable now. And I’m tired. And I hurt. And I really don’t care to go on with this life. Existence on earth really feels a bit useless.
Today is Dad’s 71st birthday. I hope he feels better about his life than I do about mine right now. I recall his birthdays when we were younger, making golden butter cakes with chocolate frosting and singing to him. He even had a headful of hair back then. I miss my Daddy already and he isn’t even gone. His partner misses him to. And I miss the woman she used to be before a stroke 11 years ago robbed us of the real Linda Kern Hall. I am jealous that other people take their parents for granted and they have good health and haven’t exhausted their resources just to stay alive.
Yesterday there a number of small meltdowns, baseless accusations from mentally impaired parents, and then plenty of hurt feelings. So hurt, in fact, that Kris’s kids don’t even want to be near their grandmother. So hurt, that one chose to go spend the weekend with the sperm-donor dad from whom there is practically no support as opposed to stay at his own home this Thanksgiving weekend.
I feel like I’m in a Thelma and Louise movie. Nothing is going right and the border is the only escape. But you know they really do go across the border.
Today my dad’s family will begin arriving at my house at 3:30. My husband has been the best… mopping and cleaning while I either tend to my parents or try to complete my 2 classes I am taking. Both are doctoral classes and have significant demands of brain power and energy for research the next 2 weeks. So Steve, you’re a hero. Yet the house still needs to be tidied up, laundry done, food prepared. It’s 8:42 am and I haven’t the energy to walk to the bathroom let alone drag out the sage or soften butter. But I will. I’m giving myself the next 17 minutes to compartmentalize my life and get into the “normal” and “pleasant” and “collected” moods to which others are accustomed to seeing me. It will with a shower, a coke with crushed ice, and then the bell rings mentally and we’re out of the gate to get this Thanksgiving day rolling along.
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