Category: the next year (Page 2 of 3)

My doctor’s office had apparently not updated much of my records over the past few years – they had my old employer & phone number, and so I was leaning over the counter talking to the front desk lady (who’s been there forever, too, and knows me by name), answering questions as she went through her screen. It all seemed kind of funny, like all these things from three years ago – or ten – that I hadn’t thought about in so long. Then, “Emergency contact still Rick?” as she looked up at me from her keyboard, and I found myself gaping like a fish suddenly removed from its aqueous environment. Uh, Rick? That’s my dad. He’d always been my emergency contact, my whole life, until I married James, and even then, we’ve always joked that he’d totally be pulling the plug on me within five minutes. (I still trust him with my life, but I have stressed the need to MAKE SURE heroic measures had at least been attempted first!) In any event, my mind raced because part of me didn’t want to change it, to cling to another corner of my life somehow untouched or sullied by his death, but then the practical side of me woke up and stepped in and had her change it to James. But I’m putting it in writing right here, right now, that there is no plug-pulling unless a team of doctors give me no chance at all. (And I’m also going to point out I’ve had this running joke long before Will Ferrell did it in Talladega Nights!)

I’ve had dreams about my father, probably once a week, for the past month or so. He’s always alive, and it’s as though nothing ever happened. Last night was another one, and it was a bizarre scenario – he was loading up an old station wagon to leave. The thing was packed full. He was also absconding with the neighbor’s cat, because he felt it was our cat, since we cared for it, fed it, and it lived in our house. (This has no rooting in reality, but it made for some anxious moments in the dream, as the neighbor got really, really pissed.) I remember that he was planning to leave for ten years, and I went over to him, and leaned my head on his, and felt “our” connection, and I asked him if he’d consider coming back in a year, instead of ten.

I didn’t get my answer, just the memory and sensation and feeling of the love and bond we always had together. Those moments in my dreams are so pure and true, that in the waking hours, their memory becomes another part of the melancholy, the bittersweet, the dichotomy between reality and desire. It’s as if I still have cells within me that haven’t been educated or informed that he’s dead. They gather and weave a story so simple and touching and emotionally connected and it gives me such an enormous sense of peace in my dreams. The next day, that peace slowly becomes stained with the knowledge that it was, in fact, only a dream, and those cells must go through the education and acceptance process.

As hard as it is the next day, I love those fleeting moments of connection….

Well, in a preemptive strike maneuver, I went to my doctor today & am now on a 10-day antibiotic regimen, to knock whatever thinks it might be taking up residency in my lungs. It’s a delightful, wheezy hacking cough, one that caused such levels of consternation from James’ grandfather that I finally asked him if he was preparing to perform last rites on me, I only had been sick less than two days at that point! The big comedy moment came when he emerged with a bottle of generic mucinex, which happened to be exactly the same formula as the generic mucinex I was taking. I sprung for the uber-pricey, name-brand stuff yesterday, because they make it in an extended-relief that spans 12 hours, vs. the 4 hours of relief from the generics. So far, it’s living up to its promise – I still cough and whatnot, but not as violently. Sadly, I’m waking myself up coughing, which has been a nice flashback to the beginning of the year, when the ace-inhibitor allergy lasted 3 months. In any event, my goal is to avoid bronchitis/walking pneumonia, and to salvage as much of my vacation as I can – after all, I want to enjoy the time off, not spend it hacking up a lung.

Well! Doesn’t this just make me an old gal, talking for an entire paragraph about health issues. Might just need to rename this blog The Bursitis Times. But I’ve been in such a stupor, not much else is going on right now. We’re going to have Christmas, Part II, tomorrow, and then it’s Boxing Day (Yay! It’s so much easier to call it that!) and all the fun shopping that goes along with it. I did finish my Army Girl Duet Yarn toe-up socks, and I’ll get pictures tomorrow. I also picked up the Chevron Scarf (half done) and got a few rows worked there – I’m all about getting some of these WIP’s finished, so I also need to haul out the Rambling Rows afghan & pop a couple movies into the DVR. We watched the latest Harry Potter tonight, the Simpsons Movie a few nights ago, and SuperBad awaits us tomorrow. I’ve got Capote on the DVR, too. So far, nothing’s blowing me away – HP and Simpsons were enjoyable, but not enough to leave me raving about ’em.

I was reflecting on the Christmas Eves of my youth (see, old lady chat again…) and recalling the excitement and anticipation, the unknowns and surprises – seeing what my parents got each other in addition to what I got from them. I remembered a last-minute shopping trip with my dad (which was every year), but this one in particular stands out. We went into a bookstore. He had already selected a stack of books, and wide-eyed, I asked him if he was going to buy ALL those books. He replied he was, and at that point, we were in the cartoon section – he started pulling books off the shelf onto the floor. He told me if I picked them up, he’d buy those, too. I remember being caught up in the excitement, it felt sort of crazy-reckless, my father was just going willy-nilly with shopping. Years later, when I looked back on it, I always felt kind of weird, like somehow it was strange, the only word I could find was demeaning, to have me scramble behind him, picking up books. (I didn’t feel weird at the time, I was ecstatic to be getting all these books!) Now, I sort of see it differently. He would fall into a dark, deep depression before Christmas, because his mother’s death was around the holidays. We alternated years for decorating the house, and I remember the days leading up to Christmas Eve as taught, wary, even fearful, and mostly seeing my father’s back as he buried himself in work to get through the days.

What I picked up on in that bookstore was the pain. The pain of missing someone so much that no amount of presents, or books, or even the family in front of you can erase. The sort of pain that makes you callous to the smaller things when it’s looming in your heart. The bitter, tinny voice in your head that says, “Sure, fucking buy every book in the store and it still won’t silence me.” This has been a rough December for me, much harder than last year, and I miss him enormously. In some ways my memories of him at this time have become mirrors, and I see myself reflected in them. In some ways I am closer to him now, understanding him, because it is an experience we now share. I don’t want to be him, I surely surely don’t, angry and sarcastic and bristling at every edge and corner, ready to explode. Of course I read those words and know every one of them describe me at points in all of this. Perhaps it is in the total consuming, the way pain and grief swallowed him up and took him from us for weeks, that we can be different. I’m having a blue Christmas, I’m sick on top of it all, and I’m ready to feel better and to smile. So, lest you think I’m not counting my blessings in all of this: I have family and friends who love me, and I love them. I have a wonderful husband, three awesome dogs, a warm, safe place to live, and more yarn than I can knit. I will have laughter and fun during this vacation. But I miss him. And I always will. It’s a challenge sometimes to figure out where to put that, in my heart, so it’s not always knocking me in the forehead or tripping my feet. I just miss him.

The older you get, the more you forget things. Not that they ever completely leave you, but they get buried, they blend in, you don’t see the sharp outline. Something that was huge (HUGE!) when you were 16 feels like a small divot of earth at 39. You run your finger along the groove of mortar between the bricks so many times, you no longer notice the small stone that is embedded there, it is simply part of the fabric of the wall, your history, your life.

And then, someone says something. Or you smell it. Or it comes up in casual conversation. For me, hearing just two words strung together – eleven small letters – was the emotional equivalent of grasping a live power line. At first I didn’t even understand what was happening. (I’m not going to tell you what the words were, yet. I want to explain their effect, and I feel if I tell you? It cheapens the moment. You will focus on the lines and curves of those letters, predetermining the amount of emotion you think you should absorb. Into the pool, I say, all the way to the bottom.) I felt as though a closet door had been opened, and a thousand Revere Copper-Bottom Saucepan Lids had fallen around me. Bright glints, a rapid slide show from my childhood. Reduced to tears, but out of a place of winsome joy. A thin slice of wistful sadness, knowing I would never hear them again from the person who said it to me the most. Where I had been when I heard those words, many times in my life. What it meant then. How I know what it meant now. How I know now, with my father dead and my mother living her separate life, what they wanted for me as my parents, regardless of their own weaknesses and baggage. Two words, the essence of love. A wish for peace. Simply the best. Simply to be safe. Simply to be happy. So many other points in life they pushed, they set my goals, they pushed me into the mold they thought would break them free of their own chains. But each night, after we said our goodnights, my father would pause, and say ‘sweet dreams’.

James said the very same thing to me the other night just before falling asleep, and I made him repeat it – I felt bewildered and confused. Like someone finally said the password to my soul, and even if he’d said it before, it could only be said in the dark of a chilly December night, on that night, and that night alone, and one of my deeply forgotten pieces would unlock and reveal that it had been there all along, waiting to be rediscovered. The small pebble in the mortar became a button that opened a brick, a secret passageway, a hideaway to a memory that had gotten lost, under all the other things. A little cubbyhole that will help soften the harshness of the past, a footnote to some of the other memories that curse and drive me still today. Today, as I write this, tears fall, the tears I’ve held at bay all week through my frustration and anger. I have been bitter and angry and out of sorts, disgusted with the past, desirous of controlling the future. But that night, I felt bathed in love, old and new, and I knew that I was loved.