Long overdue life-update (Trigger warnings for discussion of death and suicide)
As you can probably surmise from the trigger warnings, the past year has been rough.
It may seem ridiculous after such a long absence from fandom to bother poking my head out, but I'm taking it as a good sign that I *can* talk about what's happening, and about why I've been away.
A very small number of fandom people know (and their support throughout the past year has been invaluable to me), but the gist of it is:
In 2012, my beautiful, beloved grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 94. It was extremely sad, but I was able to take comfort in her memory and able to content myself with the knowledge that she'd touched *so* many people throughout her long life and that she lives on in each of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Six weeks later, my father (who had been out of work for a year), left my mom a despondent voicemail. She was grocery shopping when he called, and she waited until she got to the parking lot to listen to it. By the time she listened to it, my dad had already neatly lined up his wallet, watch, cell phone, and glasses on our dining room table, headed into the garage of our family home, and hung himself from the rafters.
I don't have the words. I've tried writing about it before, but I haven't found anything that appropriately conveys the shock and horror of that day, and the blow my family was dealt.
It almost feels... like the reason Gram died when she did was to give me an example of how death should be. It should be painless, it should be peaceful, it should come at the end of a fantastic, fulfilled life, and the funeral should be a room full of sad, sniffling people - all younger than the deceased - saying things like, 'We love you so much,' and 'We'll miss you so much,' and 'Thank you for everything you've taught us.'
Dad's funeral was a sick joke compared to Gram's. There was nothing should about his death. He was vibrant, he was young, he was the life of the party, the best joker, the best dancer, the best husband and the best father ....and he left behind a mass of friends and family feeling stunned and betrayed, standing around and saying 'what. the fuck. did you do?'
And however illogical or untrue it is, it really felt (and it still feels) so personal. It feels like he looked me in the eye and said, 'I don't ever want to see you again.'
I'd love to come across as more mature than I am. I'd love to pretend to have reached a compassionate, zen-like state where I'm at peace, and where I understand why, and where I realize that there's nothing for me to forgive because it wasn't his fault.
I'd love to be that person and I hope that one day I will be.
But I can feel myself getting angry even as I'm typing this. My anger doesn't detract, I think, from the love that I have for him, but it is remarkably omnipresent and it hasn't abated much, if at all, since his death.
I'm still taking it one day at a time. Father's Day last week was even harder than I'd thought it might be.
But on the bright side, I have a wonderful mother and sister, a fantastic and incredibly supportive husband, the best friends in the world (who dropped everything to be by my side the entire week after he died), and the sweetest students I could ever imagine.
I really do have a lot to look forward to in my life. It's just hard to imagine that my dad, who was an incredibly loving and involved parent, wouldn't want to be a part of it.
Anyway. Moving on, for anyone who may have stuck with this:
I do have some tentative plans for this journal. I'd like to do some life-blogging (which will include plenty of happy things, but yes, probably a bit of grief-recovery), and hopefully some writing/fanfiction. I may post fairly often (every few days? weekly?) and if that's going to bother you, please feel free to defriend me - I promise I will not take it remotely personally. We all have busy lives and I do tend to blather.
I just started writing fanfiction again. When my husband came home from work two weeks ago and saw what I was doing, I think he nearly cried from relief, because it's been so long since I could write anything, and he knows how cathartic it is for me. I'm signed up to do the Klaine Big Bang, and even though my poor beta will probably cry when she sees how rusty and confused my writing is, I'm committed to making it happen.
Even just writing and posting about this was draining, so I think I'm going to ask either the husband or the cat if they could snuggle me for a bit, but... thank you for listening. Sending love and happy thoughts to all. <3
It may seem ridiculous after such a long absence from fandom to bother poking my head out, but I'm taking it as a good sign that I *can* talk about what's happening, and about why I've been away.
A very small number of fandom people know (and their support throughout the past year has been invaluable to me), but the gist of it is:
In 2012, my beautiful, beloved grandmother passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 94. It was extremely sad, but I was able to take comfort in her memory and able to content myself with the knowledge that she'd touched *so* many people throughout her long life and that she lives on in each of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Six weeks later, my father (who had been out of work for a year), left my mom a despondent voicemail. She was grocery shopping when he called, and she waited until she got to the parking lot to listen to it. By the time she listened to it, my dad had already neatly lined up his wallet, watch, cell phone, and glasses on our dining room table, headed into the garage of our family home, and hung himself from the rafters.
I don't have the words. I've tried writing about it before, but I haven't found anything that appropriately conveys the shock and horror of that day, and the blow my family was dealt.
It almost feels... like the reason Gram died when she did was to give me an example of how death should be. It should be painless, it should be peaceful, it should come at the end of a fantastic, fulfilled life, and the funeral should be a room full of sad, sniffling people - all younger than the deceased - saying things like, 'We love you so much,' and 'We'll miss you so much,' and 'Thank you for everything you've taught us.'
Dad's funeral was a sick joke compared to Gram's. There was nothing should about his death. He was vibrant, he was young, he was the life of the party, the best joker, the best dancer, the best husband and the best father ....and he left behind a mass of friends and family feeling stunned and betrayed, standing around and saying 'what. the fuck. did you do?'
And however illogical or untrue it is, it really felt (and it still feels) so personal. It feels like he looked me in the eye and said, 'I don't ever want to see you again.'
I'd love to come across as more mature than I am. I'd love to pretend to have reached a compassionate, zen-like state where I'm at peace, and where I understand why, and where I realize that there's nothing for me to forgive because it wasn't his fault.
I'd love to be that person and I hope that one day I will be.
But I can feel myself getting angry even as I'm typing this. My anger doesn't detract, I think, from the love that I have for him, but it is remarkably omnipresent and it hasn't abated much, if at all, since his death.
I'm still taking it one day at a time. Father's Day last week was even harder than I'd thought it might be.
But on the bright side, I have a wonderful mother and sister, a fantastic and incredibly supportive husband, the best friends in the world (who dropped everything to be by my side the entire week after he died), and the sweetest students I could ever imagine.
I really do have a lot to look forward to in my life. It's just hard to imagine that my dad, who was an incredibly loving and involved parent, wouldn't want to be a part of it.
Anyway. Moving on, for anyone who may have stuck with this:
I do have some tentative plans for this journal. I'd like to do some life-blogging (which will include plenty of happy things, but yes, probably a bit of grief-recovery), and hopefully some writing/fanfiction. I may post fairly often (every few days? weekly?) and if that's going to bother you, please feel free to defriend me - I promise I will not take it remotely personally. We all have busy lives and I do tend to blather.
I just started writing fanfiction again. When my husband came home from work two weeks ago and saw what I was doing, I think he nearly cried from relief, because it's been so long since I could write anything, and he knows how cathartic it is for me. I'm signed up to do the Klaine Big Bang, and even though my poor beta will probably cry when she sees how rusty and confused my writing is, I'm committed to making it happen.
Even just writing and posting about this was draining, so I think I'm going to ask either the husband or the cat if they could snuggle me for a bit, but... thank you for listening. Sending love and happy thoughts to all. <3