More deep thoughts...

You know how I said I don't like Fridays?

Man oh man. I don't know what happened, but last Friday night, some kind of hell-hole portal opened up. I just could not stop crying from, like, Friday at about 7pm, until . . . not sure exactly.  I eventually fell asleep Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, so, sometime then?  I was seriously in a state of tears or almost tears that whole time.  And just mad. Mad at everything.  Mad that my Dad isn't alive anymore, mostly.  Probably the "Anger" stage of grief, one part of my brain said, but then I told myself to shut up and quit trying to be so effing smart because what does it matter anyway? My Dad is gone, and I miss him so much...

And it's funny, because earlier that day I was thinking that I have been handling this all pretty well, not having any mental breakdowns, yadda yadda yadda.  Maybe I'm going to be alright. Maybe my anti-depressants are working too well. Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet.  I don't know how to let it sink in.  I think it just has to sink in on it's own.  It's been sinking in for years.  It's been years since I've been able to call my Dad and just talk to him on the phone.  It's been a few years since I've been able to have a legible conversation with him (yes, I know I said 'legible').  Of course there were happy moments in the last few years -- I will never forget going to visit him at the stupid nursing home and the way he would smile and wave at me and say, "Hi, kiddo!" or "Hi, sweetheart!".  Even if we couldn't have meaningful conversations, he knew I was there.  He knew I was there on the day he died, and the days leading up to the day he died.  

The most difficult conversation I ever had with my Dad was a monologue, lol.  It was the day he died.  A few hours before he died, actually.  We were all sitting around his bed and I just had this really strong, sudden urge to talk to him alone.  I kinda fought it, because I didn't want to be weird and make everyone leave the room, but I didn't want to say what I had to say to my Dad with everyone (or anyone else) in the room, either.  So I argued with myself for a while and thought, maybe I can just have this conversation with him telepathically, but that didn't feel right, and finally I was like -- no, I have to talk to him, and everyone else has to leave.  So I asked everyone else to leave.  And I'm not going to tell you (or anyone else) everything that I said to my Dad, because that's going to forever be between me and my Dad.  He didn't respond but I know he heard me.  I felt oddly better after that, in a way.  For a short time, anyway.  It's hard to explain.  

Anyway, so Sunday I woke up feeling like my antidepressants had kicked in again.  We went to the state fair -- something I didn't think I would have been able to do the day before.  I was looking forward to going, to being lost in a sea of people for a while, and to just walk around aimlessly and indulge in some retail therapy.  I only cried the usual daily amount (lol) which was a complete 180º difference from Saturday.  Seriously...I cried more on Saturday than I did even on the day he died.  I don't know what it was exactly, but it reached up and smacked me out of nowhere, and nothing at all was making me feel better that day. All I could do was try to hang on and go with the flow (lame pun somewhat intended) and do whatever I could or couldn't do that day, and be ever so thankful that my hubby understands what I'm going through.  Which also makes me super sad.

Seriously, though. I never realized how many people I know who "know what I'm going through" i.e. have lost a parent (or more than one parent) until recently, and that just breaks my heart, too.  That there are so many of us living with this kind of pain and sadness...it's horrible.  Talk about belonging to the club that no one wants to join! It is just so heart-wrenching.  I can't even find the words right now. It makes me sick to my stomach. I want to gather us all together into a big group hug or something, only on the condition that no one says the words "I'm sorry" or asks "How are you doing?".  There are no good, accurate replies/answers to give.  We know you're sorry -- we're sorry, too.  And if you don't know how we're doing, you really don't want to know.  I don't want to answer how I'm doing because I might be brutally honest and it might be a bad time to be brutally honest, or it might be that I've already told myself that if someone asks how I'm doing, just say "I'm ok".  On the other hand, I haven't come up with any good replacement things to say to someone who is grieving yet.  I've said the same things to people and probably will continue to do so, but I am trying like hell to find other things to say.  Because after the first three times you hear "I'm sorry," you pretty much go numb to it.  You have to, or else you will yell back something like, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT SO STOP APOLOGIZING!!

Alright, that's enough for now. Gotta get back to work. TTYL

3; or, "I don't like Fridays..."

 

Friday used to be my favorite day of the week.

Even when I worked a crazy/non-traditional schedule and Fridays were my Mondays -- alright, maybe Friday wasn't my favorite day of the week back then, but it still always had that je ne sais quoi undertone.  That somewhat adventurous, never-know-what-to-expect sort of thing.  Then, of course, I went back to working Monday-Friday and Friday went back to signifying the end of the week, which we are conditioned to look forward to from the time we start school, because it signals the coming of the WEEKEND!  Two days off in a row! Yee-haw!!

But now...now, I don't know.  For the foreseeable future, all that comes to mind when I think of Friday, is that it marks however many weeks since I last saw my Dad.  Today, it's 3.  That does not seem like very many weeks, and it seems like a lot of time.  I don't remember the last time I went three weeks without seeing my Dad.  I miss him.  I miss the way his face would light up when he'd see me.  I miss his voice.

This week at work wasn't as bad as last week was.  This week I feel a little more human again, a little more empathetic, a little less like I want to quit nursing altogether and find a job working with inanimate objects.  I don't think I cried at work this week, at least not in front of anyone.  

My Mom and I went and picked up my Dad's cremated remains this week.  That was not nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be!  Maybe because I've had so many pets cremated so I kind of knew what to expect, I don't know.  For some reason, it put me in a better mood, which surprised the crap out of me because I don't believe that those cremains are "my Dad" any more than I believe that cardinals are him coming to visit.  This is where I pull the science card, and maybe that's just to protect my sanity right now.  But I really honestly feel that after about 7:30pm on August 2nd, when my Dad's heart stopped beating and his lungs stopped breathing, the physical body that was lying in that bed was not him anymore.  For one thing, it looked nothing like him.  Not the way I think of him or remember him, or know that he wants to be remembered.  When the life and soul left that mortal shell of tissue and bones, that body stopped being my Dad.  Therefore, those cremated remains are not my Dad, either.  But, they mean the world to my Mom, and for lack of a better term, I refer to the package we received from the Cremation Society as "Dad's urn" or "Dad's remains" or sometimes even just "Dad" when I'm talking to my Mom.  It makes her feel better, and that's what I'm supposed to do right now.  

Me? I'm indifferent.  I'm glad he's not buried -- I do like the idea of cremation better than burial -- and there are provisions for what to do with the cremated remains, but not until both of my parents have passed. So until then, Dad's urn will live with my Mom.  Presently sitting on the side table next to her recliner in her living room.  And if you thought I was kidding when I said I was going to put googly eyes on it, I am so definitely not kidding.  Dad would want it that way.  I have big plans for "decorating" his urn over the next few weeks and months.  Heh heh heh.

That reminds me, one thing I do kind of feel bad about, is that my Mom keeps saying that she wishes he would come visit her in a dream.  I don't want to tell her that I've had lots of dreams with him in them in the last three weeks.  The first one was just like a day or two after he passed.  A few of them have been horrible nightmares where he's actually died again in the dream -- thankfully I haven't had any of those for about a week or so now, because they're terrible.  And it's not like he's "come to me" in my dreams with some beautiful message about how everything is going to be okay and blah blah blah, they were just, like, regular dreams where things are happening and then he's just there and I'm like, oh, hey.  In one dream, we were grocery shopping.  In another, we were hanging out in the backyard on a summer day (along with, like, every Boxer I've ever had, and even Nicker).  They weren't like, "HERE I AM FROM THE DEAD WITH AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR YOU!"  They were just, you know, I just wake up and I'm like...awwwww. That was a nice dream. But I do feel bad that my Mom hasn't had any dreams like that yet.  I don't know why I feel bad, it's not like it's something I can control or anything.  

Alright, alright, alright.  I should dry my eyes and get back to work. 

TTYL!

It's been two weeks since you looked at me...(lame BNL semi-reference)

I feel like I have a whacked sense of humor.

But these days, I feel like I have a whacked sense of everything.

I have to be careful because I'm writing this at work. And while I currently have my little office (occupancy: 3) to myself for the day, the walls are thin and I do need to integrate with others at some point in the near future.  My water bottle is almost empty, and I have a meeting to attend in about half an hour.  It's an in-person meeting, but I could attend virtually if necessary.  We'll see.  And not just dependent upon my emotional state, ha, ha.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's odd. That's the best word I can come up with for it right now: odd.  This stage of my life.  A while back I started a blog entry which I intended to be somewhat of a series about the five stages of grief, and how people who have loved ones with dementia go through all of those stages frequently.  

I never really thought of myself as someone with a scientific or analytical mind, but I've realized lately that I really am.  Sometimes I want a concrete explanation for what is happening.  That's not always possible, of course, but I like to try.  Sometimes I'm just not content with, "Because God says so."  

I do know that I've always preferred to see things in writing.  Long before I ever knew there were such things as different learning styles, I did so much better retaining information that I could read or write.  True story -- one time, to pass a chemistry class (in another lifetime when I thought I wanted to be a medical assistant) that was all lecture and I was having the hardest time grasping the information, I practically copied the entire textbook (calm down, it was more of a workbook than a textbook) in my own hand into two notebooks so I would retain enough information to pass the final.  It worked!  I didn't become a medical assistant for various other reasons, and I ended up taking another chemistry class about 15 years later when I was in nursing school (and I passed that one without having to literally rewrite the curriculum).  

That's probably my most extreme example, but I did take a LOT of notes in nursing school.  And I'm still a heavy note-taker today.  But I digress, because I also like to see things in print-writing, too.  It makes it seem more official.  Proof that Something Happened, if you will.  

Which is probably why I've obsessively read and re-read and re-re-read my Dad's online obituary ever since it was published yesterday.  Seriously.  Obsessed.  Even though I know the words (since I wrote them), I still stare at them -- the names and dates and details with which I am ever so intimately familiar, as they are also the fabric of my very being -- as if I'm seeing them for the first time.  I read the words and what they're saying and I feel like I need to pry open a hole in my teeny-tiny brain so the reality of what I'm reading can trickle down deep into my core.  

Because I still feel like I'm reading about it happening to someone else.  I recognize those names and dates and details, and this is published on the internet for the whole world to see (and you know they can't post something on the internet unless it's true!!), and it's posted by an actual legitimate funeral home, but it's just, you know, another obituary.  It's a picture of my Dad from long before I was born, and it sort of resembles him, but it's not how I remember him, so it's not, like, striking me in the heart or anything.

I've been told that no matter what I feel, it's not wrong.  And I hope that's true, because I often feel like I'm not feeling sad enough.

And then I think about all the times over the last 5 or so years that I've just completely lost it, crying myself to sleep, or crying on the entire drive home from the cities, or breaking down in tears just trying to update someone on how my Dad was doing, and I feel like I've been mourning for a very long time. Because that's how dementia works. Dementia is the devil. Dementia steals your person away so slowly and subtly that by the time their physical being is depleted, they are but a sliver of the person they once were.  

So that's where I am right now.  There isn't this sudden, horrible change in my life yet.  My most recent memories of my Dad, unfortunately, are of the last year of visiting him at the nursing home and keeping mental track of his physical and cognitive decline (the big reason why I also obsessed over reading his medical records -- seeing it in writing helped me process it and made it more true. I didn't have to rely on my own judgement).  I know highly suspect it would be different if he had been strong and active and coherent until the day of his passing, but that's not how it was. 

I hated going to that nursing home. I hated everything about visiting him there.  It took every ounce of everything I had to force myself to walk in there and see him. And he was literally in the room that was farthest away from the entrance, so we had to walk through many hallways to get to him. All the different sights and smells and the looks of all the other people, not so much the other residents but the staff.  Everything about that place just felt so hopeless.  I don't doubt that part of that was because I knew he wasn't going to leave there alive.

Alright, I'm gonna sign off for a bit. Time to help my Mom take care of all of the crappy stuff one must do after one's person has become deceased.  TTFN!

August 2, 2024 = the end.

I've just finished writing my Dad's obituary.

I thought it would be a lot harder to write than it was.  Not that it was easy, but I didn't cry while writing it.  

My Mom read it and approved.  It's, like, a page long (in Word).  She said she would've written maybe three sentences, so she's glad I wrote it.  My parents have always thought I was a gifted writer, so I have no doubt that my Dad would have wanted me to write this final summary of his life on earth now. I'm glad I wrote it, too.  I do, after all, have perfectionist tendencies, and wanted to make sure this was perfect.  I didn't trust this task to anyone else.

I'll post the link on FB when it's available, which will probably be tomorrow.

So yeah.  I keep repeating the words over to myself, the same way I used to repeat, "My Dad is in a nursing home" or "My Dad is in hospice" but it seems even more surreal than anything I've ever faced in my life. So far.  "My Dad died."  On Friday, August 2, 2024 at about 7:30pm.  It sucked.  It continues to suck.  

I am overcome by an immense feeling of relief that I don't have to worry about him anymore, or worry where I will be when I get "The Call".  I truly rejoice in the fact that he is no longer suffering.  I'm so very glad that our terrible journey with dementia is over.  Dementia has been stealing my Dad from me for so long, as I've documented here, that this step just feels like another smack upside the head.  One that doesn't hurt my Dad anymore.  I'm glad to never have to go to that nursing home again.  

My Dad's last words to me were on Wednesday, July 31.  Sometime in the afternoon, I don't know for sure.  I was getting ready to leave for a little bit, I don't remember those details. But I gave him a hug and kissed his cheek and looked him right in the eyes -- his eyes were open at the time, or what counted as "open" at the time, but he looked right back at me and I told him I loved him.  And he said, "I love you, too."  I mean...I had only hoped and prayed that those would be his final words to me, when the time came.  I knew then that it was "the time" -- the time for his last words to me, probably the last time he'd look me in the eye (it was).  And I don't care what anyone says, he knew it was me.  No one has said he didn't know it was me, I'm just saying -- he knew.  He might have been in the final stages of dementia and gorked out of his mind on lorazepam and morphine, but he knew it was me.  Of this I have absolutely no doubt.

So now, I'm staying a few days at my Mom's house to provide emotional support and help her get some things done.  The only difference is that our plans don't involve going to the nursing home to visit Dad.  And Mom is a LOT crabbier than usual, but who can blame her?!  I used to try to keep things upbeat but now I just settle for not contributing to making them worse.  

Oh, well. I'm gonna sign off for now.  I don't feel like getting into anything too deep, because I haven't cried really hard today and I'd kinda like to keep it that way.  Good night, y'all.