Emotional Hypothermia
I got the call last night that I had been expecting for the last five years.
I had lain down after getting home from work yesterday, and fallen asleep. I was dreaming a long involved dream about hamsters and gerbils and rats (cute rats; I'm not rodent-phobic) all running around loose, and I had to round them all up and put them back in their tiny cages, so they would be safe. I remember thinking that I was dreaming; I realized it was a really strange dream, and that I wanted to remember it when I woke. But I couldn't wake up. I couldn't seem to make myself breathe deeply, or turn over, or even open my eyes.
The Big Guy called me to come eat dinner, and I finally struggled awake, like swimming up from deep water. I staggered into the family room, and plopped into the big chair, rubbing my eyes. The phone rang, and the caller ID showed my dad's name. I grabbed the phone, and it was his wife.
Crying.
Apologizing for not saving him.
Letting me know it was quick and painless.
I tried to reassure her; we all knew how ill he was, although he had not been completely honest with me about his health in the last couple of months. It seems he was in his home office while she was making dinner. They were talking back and forth, but when she asked him what salad dressing he wanted, there came no answer. Rushing in, she found him in his chair, unresponsive. "Like when he had the stroke, after the cruise last year." she said. Nobody had told me that he had this stroke. The paramedics were called, and they worked heroically on him for 25 minutes, but there was no bringing him back.
She said the funeral home people were on their way to pick up the body. She said she had an appointment to make arrangements. "After all, I was his wife for 35 years." I told her that she had taken really good care of him, and I meant it; he would have gone years ago if not for her meticulous oversight of his increasingly fragile health.
As usual in a crisis, I was pretty level-headed. I took down the information. I asked if anyone there needed my presence. I made a list in my head of who I needed to call, what I needed to do. I called them. I checked my funeral clothes. I notified my boss.
I started shaking all over, like I was cold down in my core, and I couldn't get warm. Can one get emotional hypothermia?
My dad's name was Tommy Lee Mitchell, but he hated being Tommy, so his friends called him Tom, or Mitch. My sister and I always called him Daddy; he left our mom and us when we were very little girls, and so our relationship with him seemed to be stuck in a time warp where we couldn't ever really grow up. He was in and out of our lives, not always reliably; like every human being I've ever known, he was a jumbled mixture of kindness and selfishness and folly and wisdom. He loved many different types of music, and he would always play his latest find for you, at top volume. He was full of advice, and he gave it freely whether you wanted it or not. He had an enormous ego, a real fear of having his failures discovered, and a pronounced propensity for being a horse's ass. (At my maternal grandmother's funeral, he saw fit to give a negative critique of my friend's newly-published book. To her face.) All of these things were assets in his tenure as union local president (Communication Workers of America, Local 6390) and national and regional negotiator.
All I really ever wanted from him was his love and approval; it was hard to come by, in large part I think because he had no idea how to give it. In my adult years, we had settled for a kind of friendship, mandated by physical distance and the undercurrent of mistrust between us that couldn't be denied, just tolerated and worked around. We had plans to get together when he was back in town; he was supposed to call me when they were settled in.
Daddy didn't believe in an afterlife; he wasn't a spiritual person. His wife is, so I am sure there will be somebody talking about Jesus at the memorial. Oy. I lit no candles, said no prayers for his soul; it seemed somehow wrong to force that on him. We will, of course, remember him at Samhain. Prayers for his wife will be most welcome; this is not the first catastrophic loss she's had.
As for me, tears come and go, often with no rhyme or reason; I'm eating and sleeping and taking my meds, and only occasionally staring off into space. My sons will be at the funeral with me; witchgrrl is stuck in California, short notice airfares being what they are.
Hug your loved ones, my friends.
I had lain down after getting home from work yesterday, and fallen asleep. I was dreaming a long involved dream about hamsters and gerbils and rats (cute rats; I'm not rodent-phobic) all running around loose, and I had to round them all up and put them back in their tiny cages, so they would be safe. I remember thinking that I was dreaming; I realized it was a really strange dream, and that I wanted to remember it when I woke. But I couldn't wake up. I couldn't seem to make myself breathe deeply, or turn over, or even open my eyes.
The Big Guy called me to come eat dinner, and I finally struggled awake, like swimming up from deep water. I staggered into the family room, and plopped into the big chair, rubbing my eyes. The phone rang, and the caller ID showed my dad's name. I grabbed the phone, and it was his wife.
Crying.
Apologizing for not saving him.
Letting me know it was quick and painless.
I tried to reassure her; we all knew how ill he was, although he had not been completely honest with me about his health in the last couple of months. It seems he was in his home office while she was making dinner. They were talking back and forth, but when she asked him what salad dressing he wanted, there came no answer. Rushing in, she found him in his chair, unresponsive. "Like when he had the stroke, after the cruise last year." she said. Nobody had told me that he had this stroke. The paramedics were called, and they worked heroically on him for 25 minutes, but there was no bringing him back.
She said the funeral home people were on their way to pick up the body. She said she had an appointment to make arrangements. "After all, I was his wife for 35 years." I told her that she had taken really good care of him, and I meant it; he would have gone years ago if not for her meticulous oversight of his increasingly fragile health.
As usual in a crisis, I was pretty level-headed. I took down the information. I asked if anyone there needed my presence. I made a list in my head of who I needed to call, what I needed to do. I called them. I checked my funeral clothes. I notified my boss.
I started shaking all over, like I was cold down in my core, and I couldn't get warm. Can one get emotional hypothermia?
My dad's name was Tommy Lee Mitchell, but he hated being Tommy, so his friends called him Tom, or Mitch. My sister and I always called him Daddy; he left our mom and us when we were very little girls, and so our relationship with him seemed to be stuck in a time warp where we couldn't ever really grow up. He was in and out of our lives, not always reliably; like every human being I've ever known, he was a jumbled mixture of kindness and selfishness and folly and wisdom. He loved many different types of music, and he would always play his latest find for you, at top volume. He was full of advice, and he gave it freely whether you wanted it or not. He had an enormous ego, a real fear of having his failures discovered, and a pronounced propensity for being a horse's ass. (At my maternal grandmother's funeral, he saw fit to give a negative critique of my friend's newly-published book. To her face.) All of these things were assets in his tenure as union local president (Communication Workers of America, Local 6390) and national and regional negotiator.
All I really ever wanted from him was his love and approval; it was hard to come by, in large part I think because he had no idea how to give it. In my adult years, we had settled for a kind of friendship, mandated by physical distance and the undercurrent of mistrust between us that couldn't be denied, just tolerated and worked around. We had plans to get together when he was back in town; he was supposed to call me when they were settled in.
Daddy didn't believe in an afterlife; he wasn't a spiritual person. His wife is, so I am sure there will be somebody talking about Jesus at the memorial. Oy. I lit no candles, said no prayers for his soul; it seemed somehow wrong to force that on him. We will, of course, remember him at Samhain. Prayers for his wife will be most welcome; this is not the first catastrophic loss she's had.
As for me, tears come and go, often with no rhyme or reason; I'm eating and sleeping and taking my meds, and only occasionally staring off into space. My sons will be at the funeral with me; witchgrrl is stuck in California, short notice airfares being what they are.
Hug your loved ones, my friends.