Grief A New Emotion

Reflecting on my father's passing and other happenings.

…how does one start a journal entry to deal with grief? Does it just blot out like a towel on a wet mirror…Like using a cleaning solvent to get a particularly hard stain off latex painted walls?

 

 I feel rather like I’m sitting with my arms wrapped around my legs in a pond with it only covering halfway up my thighs. It’s a cold, dark morning in the middle of July perhaps and somehow in my mind I envision Chicago Illinois as the setting. I can hear crows cawing in the distance and the sound of dripping water like in a subway tunnel. I can’t explain it. I look up and I can see crows circling cawing. But I don’t feel scared I don’t think. I feel lost…alone.

 

 Ever since my dad passed away Dec. 17, 2008 at around 10pm I’ve felt this way. Not totally numb but unable to fathom him not being here. Perhaps bewilderment is the name.  I don’t know how I should feel or what to do with myself. I really just don’t.

 

 It’s weird and sad that I won’t get to see him anymore or his voice or hear my mom complain about another crazy thing he’s done even if that crazy stuff was because of his Dementia. I remember before he went into the first retirement home him taking me aside in his bedroom and telling me that he loves me and mom and that if he starts acting different that he still cares about us and wants us to be well or something along those lines.

 

 Then way before that I remember him coming into my room when I was staying at my parent’s house before my husband came back from sea duty. He gave me his pocket watch and told me to keep it. That was one of the most heart breaking moment before he passed.

 

 The next was before he first went into the retirement home. The third was when he was really sick at the hospital and me and my husband went to see him. He was pinned down into a bed and had tubes up his nose to breathe and he was struggling to tell us stuff. I don’t know know if he was lucid enough to know what he was saying but at one point he told me that he just wanted to die to just let him die.

 

 I remember my husband blaming my mother and saying that her constantly nagging him and picking on him drove him to this condition but the head nurse, after I spoke with her, told him that it was not my mother or anything any of us could do. My father had brain damage from a hit to his head a long time ago and now that he was old, the damage had aged enough to cause him severe problems such as Dementia.

 

 The last painful memory was on his death bed, while he lay in a coma and the reality washed over me in waves. During that day I felt a rush of emotion that came and went. Mostly I was in shock and my f*****g Aunt with her constant nagging ‘that I knew what I had to do’ didn’t help.

 

My mother wanted me to be a part of the decision. The doctor had told us he had days to live but he would never wake up and we had to decide on whether to take him off life support or keep him on and then whether to resuscitate or not. It was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life I think.

 

My father the past two months had been very sick and me and my mom knew what was coming. We didn’t know for sure but we both just knew soon. My mom kept saying so but I kept telling her no I didn’t want to hear that. It hurt me too much to think about it.

 

 

Then when it finally did happen I just can’t believe it but yet I do. See how confused I am. One moment I am sure of what has happened and the next befuddled and shocked. It’s unreal…I think back to all those times I spent with him and I miss him so damn much. We weren’t as close as I would have liked but I wished I’d cherished him more, spent more time with him and I wish I wouldn’t feel so guilty… so wrecked.

 

I know he isn’t coming back and I know dwelling on what I wished I could have done and should have done is useless. I know that but it doesn't ease my mind or my feelings.

 

I really didn’t realize that despite him not being all I’d wished, he was still there for me even if it was minimal. I do feel bad and maybe even guilty that I didn’t get to tell him I love him and hear him say it back or at least him hear me before he went but I know he knew that I loved him and that I cared about him.

 

Parts of me are so angry especially at my aunt. I despise her and I can’t believe she would this past Christmas Eve stand there at her Ex-mother-in-law’s home and tell people that my father died and act like it was a great tragedy for HER!

 

Just for that alone I don’t want to have anything to do with her anymore. I told my mom so. I keep thinking she’s changed or she really is a good person but time and again I am proved wrong by her ways.

 

Then on Tuesday night me and my husband drove down to his parents house. Wednesday we went to my aunt’s ex-mother-in-law’s home where my Aunt did her s**t and during this my mother finally had a breakdown and flipped out on me. I don’t take it personally because I know why she flipped out.

 

Back at my husband's parent’s house. The grandmother was there.  I know she lost her husband just 2-3 months ago but I’ll be damned if its correct of her to take out her issues on me. She kept saying things to me and my husband. He kept telling me it doesn’t matter what she says just ignore it but I was feeling vulnerable. I couldn’t handle it especially after my awful aunt.

 

I remember on Wednesday morning which should have been a happy day but wasn’t because of my father’s recent passing, as we entered Yum chow (A Chinese restaurant that his parents frequent occasionally with the rest of the relatives) The grandmother stopped me before I could go in. She waited until everybody was away from us and told me some nonsense about next year being a bad luck year for me and my huband. "You are cow, you both are cows so...cow has bad luck year next year. Wear lucky necklaces..."is what she said. Perhaps to her it was trying to helpful but she has forgotten that I don't believe in luck or Buddishism and this isn't the first time she's tried to shove her beliefs down my throat. This is a free country and I am free to believe in anything I wish. Her continual efforts to force me to be Chinese or to be Buddist aggravates me.

 

After that back at his parents house on several different occasions she yapped her jaw off about don’t put marshmellows in a gas fireplace because the gas will fill my belly and make me die. That sounds like hogwash to me. She said even the stove burnt marshmellows can kill me. I’m done marshmellows on the stove since I was little and never had a problem. Still I was embarrassed  by her comment.

 

Later on I was criticized not only by her but by my husband’s mom about makeup. They said I don’t need it period that by wearing it (they said this subtly) I would look ugly. I felt like I was being ganged up on and so I defended myself and gave reasons why I wear it. Then the grandmother said, "You are just following the crowd..."  Frankly if I want to wear makeup its my freaking business because its my body and this isn’t a slave country. Its called freewill and I’m an adult so if I want to wear it I’m just going to go right on wearing it if they want to be retards and say I look ugly because I wear makeup then that’s all in their retarded messed up heads.

 

To me makeup is like watercolor or oil paint or even paint on a computer screen, the brush being the same as a paint brush and the face the canvas. It is art and why not enjoy life. Plus I have been given makeup by my relatives, by my mom and I’ve purchased a bit so might as well use what I have. Besides I don’t plaster my face in makeup I use minimal and usually only on special occasions.

 

When I finally came back home everything of those awful two weeks hung on me. I felt like I was going to burst from the anger and the pressure. I wanted to kill my aunt and my husband's grandmother. That first day home they came to visit and I told my husband, "If they do this s**t in my home they will never be welcome back. I won't deal with her shoving me around in my own home. Hell no."

 

The day went fairly smooth despite her presence. When everyone finally left I did something I'm not privy to...I took a bubble bath. I long hot one and left my mind wander for once in private. I still felt numb and I felt like a freight train crash had taken place inside.

 

I think the one thing that upset me the most was the thought of going to sleep...of seeing him in my dreams...of waking up to realize it was only a dream and that he is gone forever. Grief...what is it truly? A whirlwind of emotion, of complex pulses in the brain...?

 

One moment denying truth, the next sensitive to anything anyone has to say...I feel so out of place...so lost. Confused even. Where to go from here is all I can think...and then the sarcastic black woman that resides in me. I envision her as Black as I have a good friend who is like her. Well she speaks up and says "Do what you've always done and don't get stuck."

 

I guess move forward is all I can do. Deal with each moment and day as it comes. Does it get easier? I think so but will I forget no. My husband told me eventually I will but I don't think so. I think it will always be there in the back of my mind but maybe it won't hurt as bad. I will come to peace with the reality of it and learn to bear the pain better.

 

Grief...perhaps for the first time I understand...

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

It was a quick write up on how I was feeling a week after his passing. Only care about grammar and spelling on this one and your thoughts on my reflections.