Fruit Punch Moments.
I can't work. Not this week. Two things I'm in the middle of are roadblocked, and I'm just . . . tired. Not physically, I'm actually restless and bored, just . . . emotionally, creatively. Yeah, there's this wellspring and yadda yadda yadda, and someday it'll all come gushing back, and there will be wine and roses and kittens romping in the
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You don't want cyber hugs; if you did I'd try to construct a really creative one - yanno, with graphics and everything - to try to reflect back what you've given me, without knowing it, with your creativity, for over a year now.
I'm not going to bang on about my mother, or any of that, because it always used to irritate the hell out of me when people did that about their own losses. It can only ever be sympathy - for true emapthy I'd have to be you and know everything your mother meant to you. Like you I still call my parental house 'home' and struggled with the grammar.
The dreams, however, often had a very British tinge to them. Other family representatives and I would gather in corners and murmur to each other: Erm, does she know she's dead? Gosh, how does one broach the subject? I don't remember us ever telling her - for the most part at first she seemed a pretty ( ... )
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*cracks up*
I'm sorry. That's just flat-out hilariously British. Sad, yes, but . . . ah, how very human.
It's the grammar thing that bugs me the most, you know? I do so much of my expression through words, and when something like this happens, I'm just like "Well, NOW what am I supposed to do?"
It's been decidedly okay here, all things considered. News is slowly improving, I still have both legs, my husband has yet to die in a mutant attack, none of the cats are growing extra limbs.
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{helpless chuckling}
(odd - 'chuckling' is not a word you'd associate with 'helpless', but I don't know how else to describe the sound and the sensation...)
The grammar thing got more confusing for me when my dad remarried. Now, I hope, people know that when I say "my parents are" that it's about that pair (I got fed up of saying "my father and his wife," "my father and stepmother," "Daddy and Selwa," etc.). When I say "my folks were" it's about my biological parents.
How it's going to work when they've been married long enough for past tense creeps in, I've no idea. Luckily, my four-year-old sister (again, I hate qualifying it with half- or step- - she's important enough for me easily to be able to imagine killing/ thoroughly hurting/ incapacitating anyone who harmed her in anyway) tends to take most of our attention, and she's easy to grammar over.
Love the icon - but who's the woman in it?
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Relations are such an odd, mutable thing, and our language is pretty poorly equipped to describe even the most common complications.
(I'm told the girl in my icon is me, but I can't quite believe it, even though I was there when the picture was taken. *grin*)
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FWIW I would use present tense. At least some of your mother is still around in the memories carried by you, your siblings, her friends... or it seems that way to me. Yes, it's transient - you'll forget, they'll forget - but so is everything. Nothing is permanent. It's a tornado-strength vortex of suck.
I'm really tired, and I need to sleep, but it seems like a lot of work to go get in bed just so I can be reminded over and over again that things have changed for the suckier, just so I can feel my loss.Take your time. Move on when you are ready. Say goodbye when you are ready... maybe that's why you're dreaming about her ( ... )
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A lot, actually. I have a lot of dissonance over the fact that she and I never really got on, we weren't close, and I don't even really regret that as much as is probably decent, and yet I still miss her a lot. I don't think I would have or could have done differently, so at least I don't have guilt, but it's very weird missing a time/place that didn't make you happy. Knowing that you had that too is oddly comforting.
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Your post brought two thoughts into my mind. Hearing me sook about my own experiences probably isn't the greatest thing for you to hear, but I wanted to share for once.
1. The point you made about people having parents into their fifties/sixties... it's not the same thing, but that's how I feel about people my age who still have grandparents. I am totally jealous. (All of mine passed away before I was eight and a half. I only knew one of them at all well. I can't imagine how it was for my parents.)
2. That fruit punch moment... When a friend of mine died (unexpectedly) a couple of years ago (he was my age), I had trouble eating for a while. The shock, everyone said. Sure, but that wasn't my only problem. When I was flying home, it occurred to me that he wouldn't be eating anymore, and it took me aaaages to wrap my head around that one.
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2) YES. YES. I still stop sometimes and just stare at my plate thinking the same damn thing. Especially if it's food that I know Mom liked. Thankfully, ever so thankfully, I eat very little of that kind of food.
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Well, then. Let's put the message out there: if you're an adult and you have grandparents (and you get on with them), appreciate them! (I have been in the habit of appropriating my friends' grandparents for some time now.)
And how *can* one eat, when other people can't? It's just... odd.
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I wonder why some people move out and move on, and others don't. . . .
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I have a couple box-fulls of video that my dad took before he died, and even though I never watch them, they're comforting. The few times I've tried, I've balled my eyes out, but it's nice that they're there, because I didn't have as many years with him as most people do.
Even if you don't, maybe old neighbors might?
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