11:12 p.m. - 2007-10-10
Sadness, Wii and me
I have some fun things to add...but I'm just checking in for now. Things are fine, Mom is back home, and we just re-arranged our living room tonight. Guess why?
No, really...guess!
Yeah, to play Wii more easily!?! Oy.
I do find it totally amusing, in a "We are still such damn kids" sorta way. It also means that I got rid of the hulk of oak that was our entertainment center. I just hated that damn thing. Dust catcher, and not much else. Buck brought home some very modern looking pieces from the Evil Empire, but they are better built than a lot of things I've seen from there. No wood, all black and silver. Glass shelves. Easy to dust, nothing is closed in. I swear I'm going to spend the next couple of days looking for something that can be mounted on the wall to hold the DVD/games/music, or I'll be waiting until Buck decides. Gah.
One more quiet note. I left Cardiogirl a message today, and after I read her response, as well as some of the other comments, I wanted to expand on my thought. Here goes, pray for clarity, k?
I was 5 or so when my great-uncle (grandmother's brother) died. I still remember not being allowed to go to the funeral/wake and was quite disappointed. I liked him. He seemed fantastically old to me, but he was probably oh...60's? Perhaps younger? This was my first memory of someone dying, and it didn't make a huge impact. This was the paternal side, and they are nothing if not stoic. Next was the same uncle's mother, my great-grandmother. This was when I was 12 or 13, and I was so very sad, but I had my good memories of Grandma Beane. She was an active person in my life, and her house had good memories for me(she lived next door to my grandmother, whose neighbors on the other side are her older, and younger sister respectively). Dad and stepmom moved into the house, so I was there every other week.
As I got older, no family died until my grandmother (Mom's mom) in 1988. I was 22, living here in Massachusetts, and had to get home for the funeral...just before Christmas. This one hit me hard because it was so unexpected. She went in for tests relating to her diabetes, and had a fatal heart attack. I didn't think someone so tough would ever die. This is when I started having moments of 'missing' someone. Not often, because she and I butted heads, but she did love me fiercely and that was something I missed. Three years later, my dad's dad died, but this was after a couple of strokes, and it wasn't quite the surprise this time. It was however much harder for me; my grandmother(remember, stoic) told me I wasn't allowed to come home. 'Come home when its a happier time.' Also, Barney was probably my favorite grandparent. He was 5'7, I'm 5'11...he called me squirt!
Another longer spell, my dad's mom died in 1999, and I went home with my oldest, she was almost 4. This was hard, but better because I had my siblings to share our stupid memories with each other, and when we all got sad...we all got sad. My brother and I are the criers, but my half-sibs, stopped giving us shit when grandma died, LOL. see...giggles in the midst of tears Then, 3 years later, my dad's brother died. He had a heart attack, at home, alone and wasn't able to get hold of someone soon enough. Almost exactly a year after that my dad died. In eight weeks he went from having pneumonia, to finding lung cancer, which metastasized into bone cancer.
Now, I have moments like this one. I'm deliberately thinking about all the things I wish I could share with the ones who are gone, and kind of wallowing in my self-...ok, not pity, that isn't me; self-sadness would be a better, but not as well used, description.
I'm sitting here dripping tears, Buck is giving me the look, and I'm sad, but this is how I get through the sad times. I let the tears fall, I follow the thoughts through that are floating in my head and I let out the pain. And I kiss my kids, and look around my home and let myself feel less sad when the time comes.
I still have the phone calls to dread; my grandfather, my step-mom's parents...other great-aunts and uncles. I still think life is precious.
When it is all said and done, I have accept all the emotion, feel it, and let it go to be able to function. Trying to hold it, or bury it, or even downplay it merely makes me cry harder.
I want you to know, dear that people who find death/dying/illness uncomfortable, and try to downplay it...are missing a great opportunity to actually connect by acknowledging the ick, and in sharing the burden, lessening their own.
No, I do not go round being ghoulish!! heh
Ok, this is a big babbling mess, but its out and I'm feeling less tense. And I need to do something else; Krazee is spending tonight here. Gah.
Off to...do something. Perhaps Twilight Princess?? ;)
