In a few short minutes it will be midnight, and the date will be October 18, 2022. What's special about 10/18/22, you say? Well, really nothing special, not to the world anyway, but to me. The 18th of any month is going to be a day I remember. The 18th will mark 2 months since I received a call at work at 2:45 in the afternoon telling me that my mother had passed away, Today has been hard, my friends! That is difficult for me to say, and even worse for me to feel because I have always been the one to "hold it together." I fall apart at movies, TV shows, even commercials, but real life? Not this gal. So today, the 17th, I have been crying on and off all day, and I'm not just talking about shedding a tear or two. I'm talking weeping, audible, can't catch my breath, sobbing. It started this morning as I looked out into my backyard while I was eating breakfast. I just started to cry. Then all day, at random times I would start to cry again and have to pull myself together. I kept thinking, Stop! This isn't me. I don't do this. You're the rock, Terri. You keep yourself together," but I couldn't today, no matter how hard I tried. Now, people will say, it's ok to cry, and I know that, but I am a person who needs to know why so I can fix it. The problem is I can't fix this one. My mom is not coming back, and I can't change that. Now, I have been through a lot of shit in my life, if you follow this blog, I've written about a lot of it, and people have always said, "You're so strong!" You start to believe the hype, ya know? I'm not saying I'm not strong, I am. If not, I'm not sure I would have survived, but being that strong person made me feel like I couldn't break. Forget break, I don't even allow myself to bend. Here's the thing. I'm putting all of this on myself. I'm setting some time limit on grieving like there's a cutoff. I talked a lot today to both of my girls, and they were both wonderful and supportive as they always are, and I realized something. In the last year that I was able to actually see my Mom in the nursing facility, she really didn't talk all that much, so I would go visit and just tell her about life for the week we'd been apart. That's gone now, and I think it really hit me today how lonely that makes me feel. I was just telling her stupid stories about work or some idiot on the highway, but she listened to me and sometimes offered an opinion, or I'd say, "remember that time we...., "and she might smile and add a little to the story. All of that's gone, and I find that incredibly sad. I guess I'm not at the "memories comforting me" stage yet, and I might not be there for a long time, and today I might have taken the first step to tell myself that's ok. No little quips or sarcastic remarks today, just straight up what I'm going through. I'm going to really try hard to give myself some time, and stop saying, "stay strong" all of the time. For now, I think "fall apart" will do me more good.
