MOOD SWING
Last night we fell asleep listening to an old This American Life. I finally woke up at the end of it and felt so completely happy and peaceful and safe snuggled up with houseboy -- I felt a sense of groggy elation. Utter happiness and tranquility.

Then I blew out the candle burning next to our bed.

Within a couple minutes somehow I was thinking about my dad again and found myself sobbing. Yes, I know it's Memorial Day . . . maybe that's where this is coming from. Yes, it will be exactly one year from now soon that he passed away. But I actually do think of him . . . well, all the time. Somehow both his loss and presence are constant companions. I probably just started bawling hard about it last night though because I am in pms mode and couldn't hold back.

I watch him die over and over while I'm holding his hand. I watch him looking at me before he died . . . before I got the nurse off her lunchbreak . . . before I called my mom, my sister, and his twin. I remember how quiet it was when she shut off the oxygen. I remember more than that. Lots more that I replay over and over.

Maybe I still just worry too much about . . . things. Maybe I feel too much guilt to focus on letting go.

Maybe I just haven't reached the point where his life is full of more solid frequent memories than his sickness and death and the experiences associated with it. But that is the most recent thing, and it's hard.

Being a child and being on the other end of the spectrum aging towards death have certain qualities. A ghostliness. Impermanence. Partial presence. A confused transitional state of being that's partially here, partially somewhere else . . . and not at all capable of fully expressing or comprehending that duality. They say confused things and don't realize until afterwards that they said them in the wrong place. Or they don't know why they said them. Only that they speak and feel and experience somewhere else too. Or maybe it's just underdeveloped (for the kids) and rotting (for the aging) brains not some otherwordly existence.

After the first time my dad almost died (four years before the real thing) he became a sort of ghost. Grandpa eased into that too in the years before he died, after his brother and sister passed away. They just weren't solid anymore. They went through the motions of being alive with us but they were faded. Voices thin and without body . . . as though half of the volume of their speech was being set aside. Like having the right speaker on your stereo unplugged and only the left one projecting.

I do not feel "grief" exactly for my dad or my grandpa. Maybe what I feel is grief for myself. With these two deaths I have aged too. Part of me is lost and belongs somewhere else. I feel initiated into that reverse process . . . growing up is over and I am starting to wind down too. I hope it's a long process but I feel it happening. Frequent thoughts of dead people send energy somewhere different from when you're thinking about the living people around you. It makes me feel like part of me is being sucked out -- making me lose some solidity too and become ghostlier.

Another part of my own aging that I feel aware of is how settled in I am with my liabilities. You stop caring about changing yourself. This is who I am. Deal with it. I'm my parents. Deal with it. I can be unpleasant and stubborn and irrational and immature. Deal with it because it's not getting better. After this many years I can't overcome myself. You give up on certain kinds of growth and start preparing for death. You store certain things up and you throw other things out. What will I take with me and what will I leave behind. In my family I don't think we are ever packed and ready when it happens, no matter how many years of warning we had. Maybe I'm just scared that I'll never be ready. I don't think my dad or my grandpa was. They had to try to resign themselves to it at the last possible moments but they were conflicted. I know they were.

Maybe I'm just fucking scared to death of losing the probable next two on the list.

Maybe part of me is too aware of the wait. We're all waiting.

Last night while I was crying in the dark, the dog paced around then approached me. I remember when Daddy was in the hospital the first time. After the first few nights of sleeping at the hospital I finally came home to my house and there was a cat on the porch. For a few days this cat hung around . . . kept coming over. Never saw it before or afterwards. Never had cat visitors there. Just during this really hard time it visited and wanted in. Last night the dog led me downstairs and outside at midnight. I sat on the porch weeping while she laid in the dark listening.

When I finally got it out of my system and came back to bed, my head felt empty and good.
posted by Trixie at 5/26/2003 10:12:00 AM -