Hurry Up and Grieve!

 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. 

Check on Your Strong Friends!

Last weekend I was not in a good place. A little background in case you don't know me. I am a strong person. I "keep it together!" I am great in a crisis for that very reason. I may fall apart afterwards when I am alone, and no one else needs me, but in the middle of the chaos, you can count on me. To be sure, I am an emotional person, but when I let myself be. I often say that the reason I get so overcome and cry at movies and television shows, heck, even commercials, is because that is my release. In my real life I am the rock. Now, I think part of this is due to the fact that I have been a single mom since my girls were 2 and 5. They are now 24 and 27. When you are a single parent, you learn to put yourself on the back burner. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. If you are a single parent reading this, you know exactly what I mean. There is no one to "take care" of you emotionally or physically. We are the text book definition of "walk it off." I think the period of raising my children alone certainly honed my "keep it together" skills. However, they did not begin with single parenthood. I can remember when my grandfather died in 1993. I was 19, and I was extremely close to him. His death rocked me. I have a thing about not looking at dead bodies of people. I have an extremely visual memory, and I DO NOT want THAT to be the image I hold of my loved one forever. I was married at the time of my grandfather's funeral, but my husband was singing for the service and not with me in the private family room. The time came when the funeral director comes and asks the family if they want one last look before they close the casket. My mother and father filed out, and I cannot remember who else. I stayed behind, and then I heard my mother yelling for my grandfather to get up and sing with her. No one was making her stop or come away, so I walked out trying my best to not look into the casket, and I pulled my mother away and back into the private room, "keeping it together." When my own father passed away many years later in 2007, my children were young, and him being the only "father" with a constant presence in their lives, they were devastated when he died. I was too, but it is "my job" to "keep it together." I sat in between the two of them trying my best to comfort them. I'm not saying I didn't shed tears, but I kept it together. I am telling these stories to illustrate the fact that I don't usually fall apart, not when it counts, not when I am needed. Last weekend, I sat in my house, alone, and ugly cried for about 30 minutes. I mean wailing! The last time I remember doing that was last July when my sweet kitty of 18 years died. Even then I could not give myself time to grieve because I had to "pull myself together" as it was my first day with my summer teen theatre group. Why am I sharing all of this? Because we are in the middle of the craziest, most depressing time in my 56 almost 57 year old life. Theatre, one of my passions, is cancelled for the foreseeable future. I have not seen my 81 year old mother, who lives in a skilled nursing facility, since March 9 and have no idea when I will see her again, and even when I will be able to visit, how safe it will be. My sister moved to Florida permanently at the beginning of June, and I miss her, and I am concerned about the lack of following rules for the Pandemic, especially in her state, and the absolute disregard for human life in this country, whether it be something so small as refusing to wear a mask to protect others or as huge as the rampant racist police brutality so prevalent in America and the blatant show of hate to anyone different than ourselves. My heart is broken, and I fell apart! So, during this time, take care of yourself. Let yourself grieve and mourn the loss of life the way you knew it, but especially, check on your "strong" friends. They may need it more than you think.