I took a little time off from blogging because I was sarting to think it wasn't helping and instead it was actually causing me to be more "in my head" than not. I guess you could say that I have been attempting to avoid my own thoughts for a while now....running from something that seems stationary in your mind, heart and soul is completley futile. The holidays have reinforced that lesson.
So it's 2012. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's are all over. I made it through them. Not without MANY tears and a sickening, empty, sad gloom that hoovered over my every day, but I made it through them none the less. It was then that I really started to understand that she's not coming back.
For some time now, I suppose I have been allowing myself to think of my mom as being "away" as though in another hospital stay or at my brother's and that adventually she would be back. Thanksgiving was my first slap in the face that made me wake up to reality. Mom wasn't home for her favorite meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberries....and she never would be again.
Christmas Eve came at me like a cannon straight through my sanity. It all was real. I was wrong. There was no hospital that had my mother. My brother's house was empty and she was not there. This county, this state, this earth did not have my mom tucked away somewhere to retun her to me or to allow me to visit her. She was not going to be home to help me set up the kids' presents. She hadn't been there to help me stalk the "toy of the year" for Nate or Brooke. Mom wouldn't be in her rocking chair or any hospital bed tearing open a silly little gift that her grandkids made for her and that reality was more than I could handle!
Christmas Eve was spent 90% in tears and 10% in forced, phoney conversation on my part.
It's hard to fully expalin this new "ground" that grief has lead me to. It's been almost 1year since my mom's death and yet I feel like I hurt more and the sorrow keeps growing more intense than ever. And the only thing I can think that it steams from is that the shock of it all has worn off. I knew mom was dead...I watched her die. But I never really allowed myself to believe it I guess. And now, I am starting to believe it. Maybe every time I began to believe it before, I distracted myself and subconsiously lied to myself that it wasn't the truth nor was it as bad as it seemed. Maybe I have been going through those proverbial stages of grief and I didn't know it? Maybe it's God's way of telling me I need to go through it to begin to heal? I don't know. What I do know is that I find myself thinking of my mom all the time and reliving her last days over and over again in my head.
I found myself packing my son's lunch the other night and yet I was rehashing a conversation I had had with my mom in the hospital when she asked me if she was dying and made me promise to tell her if /when she was. "Did I keep my promise? Did I ever tell her? I'm pretty sure I never said it....pretty sure that I just avoided it and never told her the truth...What kind of daughter does that?!?!? Who doesn't keep a promise to thier mother and best friend?!?!?"
Yeah, that about sums up my everyday thoughts. Which now I am sure, must have something to do with my every night dreams/nightmares. Nice, right?
Life is something that many of us take for granted. You drive fast, you run across busy streets, you smoke, drink, lay out in the sun for hours with oil on our skin hoping to get that perfect tan.....all without ever thinking how it could harm our lives. I have to admit that I am no longer in that carefree state of living. I am fearful. And I HATE it!
I try not to be, but in all actuallity, I am scared of everything now. Every little heath issue becomes completely blown out of proportion in my mind. Every little scenerio that I hear of my loved ones being in becomes a horrible opportunity that could harm them or even worse, kill them....in my mind. Now that I know the worst CAN happen, I feel as though I am just waiting for it to happen again. That other shoe is going to drop when I least expect it...I won't be prepared....my world will once again be thrown off it's axis and I won't be ready for it. I CAN NOT HANDLE THAT AGAIN! So, I find my self here in this constant state of fear and anxiety.
And now that I see that life and time is moving on without my mom, I have a new fear that people will forget about her....that I might forget special little things about her!! I try to calm myself and I know it does no good worrying about things, however, I have always had that tendency in my nature. Lately it has just been maximized to the extreme and my anxiety become fears.
I was hoping that by this new year I would have found a way to snap myself out of this vicious cycle with myself but obviously I haven't. And so, with this new year, I am sure, will come some new fear....
