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!
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