Tag: Sisters

Only parts of me wants to be dead

Life after Holly’s murder has been harder than I realized it would be. At first, I was living on adrenaline and rage. And my sorrow was a friend, a constant comfort. The depth of your love, blah blah blah.

Yeah, well, I would be crushed to death with the grief then, because I adored Holly and she was a part of me. We shared a difficult and impossible childhood. Only we weren’t to discuss it. My father’s rages were private for only our immediate family to endure. My mom’s job became protecting his reputation so four baby girls were simply extra. We banded together in our fear and shame. In different ways we survived. Holly and I became friends and mates because we genuinely liked each other.

Life isn’t easy. There will be trials. She had a difficult marriage. But loved life, her kids, her job. She had so much passion for life. I had depression, alcoholism, my kid’s educational challenges with our school system, kid’s mental health struggles, my own workaholism. We talked about it all. She stopped my negativity with joy. She laughed at me. I liked that. Most people are too afraid of my displeasure.

Honestly what I miss the most is our laughter. And she was an inquisitive listener. The longer she’s gone, the quieter I’ve become. I won’t tell you my pain if you meet me. I won’t say how angry I am. And if you disappoint me, your loss.

After the murder though, I was a mama lion and I’d do anything for Holly’s kids and mine. And that protection, a shield against anything else hurting them, buoyed me on top of the stormy ocean of getting on with life, when I might have been collapsing, or screaming, or drowning.

We had so much happening, including my mom’s poor health, caring for her with her dementia, and when mom’s body finally quit five months after Holly’s death, well, I was strong. I’m always strong in crisis.

But I’ve been in a boiling rage. My fury is bottomless. Unforgiving. All consuming. When I open the container where I keep it, it frightens me. 

But life is going on. The need to be normal for everyone is ongoing. I’m on autopilot. Dead inside. I don’t know if I’ve lost my faith or if it was never real. I get no comfort from the idea of God. My character, if I have any, comes from a commitment to not hurt others.

What drives me now is the belief being here makes a difference in all these kids lives.

Our family keeps expanding and that brings small joys. A grandchild. A son-in-law. A fiancé. Boys and girls, she, he, they/them, coming and going, friends and lovers, college, jobs, all the things that are rooted and important to a good life. Our home has become a gathering place. I couldn’t be more pleased in that regard.

So I don’t wish for death every day. But there is just so much sadness and struggling, still inside me. The loss is eternal and as deep and broad as the Grand Canyon.

How does one go on? How do you wake up every day with a desire to be alive? In my experience, it’s one step after another. That I learned from the AA principle one day at a time.

You go through the motions. You act normal. You don’t scream. You breathe in. Out. And it slowly trains your psyche to stop screaming inside. When grief seizes, your throat closes, bile rises, you can feel your cells dying, what then?

I developed migraines after the murder. After my mom died. After my sister walked away from me for her own self-preservation. Or maybe in the middle. The timing is immaterial. Slowly, thankfully, they have stopped. There were many interventions, specialists, much personal labor, lifestyle changes including quitting my job. Perhaps my brain is ok now. I quit my neurologist so who knows. That’s a part of dying inside. 

Now I have the rest of my life looming before me. I have no hopes or dreams. The future is forboding. I’m still catastrophic in my thinking. Waiting for the next horrid thing. Braced for it. It’s no way to live but tell that to my body. Anxiety still wakes me more days than not.

One thing that’s caught me by surprise is aging. The old adage “use it or lose it” is simple and a startling realization. I’ve sat in my chair, literally and figuratively, absorbed by physical and emotional pain. And lonliness.

Meanwhile, I got old. I’m turning 60 this year and suddenly I feel like I’m dying. I’ve lost tons of strength in my body. I’ve put on pounds.

And I realize if I’m going to live, I must wake up. I won’t become my mother. She gave up.

I guess I don’t want to do that.

So, I’m getting up. Walking around the block. Eventually I’ll have to do more to preserve this vessel. I’m torn between giving up and getting on.

See you in the trail.

We are Blood.

I am sitting in my car waiting. As I have sat inside and outside of schools, doctors’ offices, and in cars, all these years.

Always sitting with my sorrow, I wait.

I wish my mother was here, I find myself saying out loud, welcome tears spring to my eyes. Also, I am still surprised by them.

My health feels like a constant betrayal, as if. Am I owed good health, not headaches, not body aches, not a loose stomach, not fatigue, not depression, not anxiety, not sleeplessness? How is it that I of all people “deserve” good health? I know that I don’t. But my mother would have had wisdom about it. I am lost.

The sky is as gloomy and dismal as my mood. It follows the grief of Palestine that is ringing in my ears, my heart, and my mind; abuzz with adrenaline from witnessing genocide. Don’t we remember Rwanda?

So many families, generations lost. I think.

How do I preserve mine? We’re fractured. My sister doesn’t speak to me, specifically. My parents are dead. Holly is dead. Our children are many including Holly’s and those that have joined ours. We are all a legacy.

We each and all matter.

Even though I feel lost, unmoored, untethered, and without roots, I feel my family lineage breaking in my body; I know that it is now my responsibility to be the strength that holds the generations together. Even though my sister has chosen not to be with me, we are vital. We are a link to the next generation. We are blood.

Grief

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Grief has no kind of timeline.

It follows strange pathways through my body. I’m tired of feeling it.

I had the thought two days ago, I want to forget her. I will gather all the things in my home that remind me of her. I will box them up and make them disappear from sight. Memories only lead to grief when your someone is murdered.

My phone rings from a good friend of thirty years.

We never talk talk. Just catch up via social media.

It triggered the same panic that I get every time the phone rings, someone is dead. I answered it. Of course no one is dead. We had a lovely conversation filled with laughter and her voice just exactly the way I remember.

I still fear answering my phone. I get a jolt of adrenaline and panic.

I’m tired of my grief. I am choosing life, I promise you. But grief just comes ambling in and you are stricken by lightening. You choose to regroup, get on with whatever it is you were doing, or curl into a singed ball.

I hear a certain performer and remember she loved going to concerts with her kids. I see a certain flower and remember her love of tulips. I smell a food and think of her cooking. I cook and the kitchen is messy, I think of how messy she was. I unlock my car and think of how she broke my lock and how furious I felt. I drive her son to football and know that she would have been a great sports Mom.

Forty something years of memories that cannot be boxed up and made to go away. Though I am tired of my grief I carry on.

Today I Said No

Today I said no.

I said no to something that might have been sweet and good, something that I would enjoy and that would make me feel good about myself – helping other people.  It was something that was even noble.  Can I be honest and tell you that I need some things to do that make me feel good about myself?  The recent Stations of the Cross exhibit, which I was a part of, was profound for me in that it was a thing that I did, for me.

Today I said no.

No because there are other good things, needs, jobs for me to do.  And I have to be careful as an addict, to not feed that need to help others.

Things are going on in my family, screaming out to me, which need resolution and clarity and my time.  My children are of the age that they need my daily prayer, daily.  My attention, fully.  My love and affirmations, honestly.  This takes the kind of attention that I haven’t had for them as of yet.  My widowed mother living alone needs more of my attention, care and to be blunt she needs errands accomplished.  My sisters each deserve my love and attention in a way that I haven’t ever had the courage to give them.  My marriage isn’t perfect; it has holes that need patching even though, after eighteen years together, we know it’s for life.  We’re in the boat together but we’ve sprung a few leaks.  No one’s sinking but we deserve to give the time that a good marriage requires.

So, today I said no – no to something good.  So that I could say yes to being a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife and more than anything I said yes to be a writer.

Today I said yes.