More Loss

It's been three weeks since my last post.  Two Sundays ago I couldn't write because I was on vacation near Yosemite without Internet access.  Last Sunday I couldn't write because I was in the E.R. with severe head and neck pain.  That same day, my dad had a massive heart attack.  I spent the next six days in the hospital being treated for varicella zoster meningitis.  Dad spent the next five days in the ICU.  I am home now.  Dad didn't make it.  He died Thursday, July 22, 2010.  He was 68.

More than anything I want to be with my mom right now.  She has lost both her son and her husband of 43 years within less than eight months.  We're still heavily grieving Mike's death, and now we have to deal with this loss.  Unfortunately, I am still too weak from the meningitis to leave the house, and still in a lot of physical pain.  It will be at least a week before I can make the long trip across the country to see her.

I grew up in Iowa with Mom, Dad, and Mike.  Two of the four of us are now gone.  Mom and I will have to figure out together how to survive these losses.  Mom, Dolly, and I are all we have left.

Independence Day

It would be nice if time healed all wounds.  It would be nice if that healing happened in a linear progression.  The day you find out about the death would the worst, and then each day after that would be a little easier.  It would be nice if grief worked that way.

Seven months in, you feel self-conscious if you bring it up too often.  You think you should be back to normal.  You wonder why the thought of that morning still stops you in your tracks several times an hour, every hour, every day.  But still you say, "Fine, thank you, how are you?"  You feel self-conscious about not being more together than you think others think you should be.

Dolly and I watched the fireworks yesterday at the county fair.  With each ooooh and ahhhh, I remembered watching fireworks with my parents when Mike and I were kids.  He was the only witness to my childhood other than my parents.  So many memories will only live on through me now.

Firecrackers outside my window.  Loud bangs.  I think of the stranger who heard the gunshot that morning.  I think of the other stranger that found the body.

Oh, if only grief were linear.  If only time healed all wounds.