The Archive:
See what's already passed
The Grief Edition
This is moved here from my myspace, where I wrote extensively
about the deaths of my grandfather in 2007 and my mother in 2009.
These collections serve as a personal reminder of the depth of emotion,
and as, I hope, a source of inspiration for those attending to their own
losses, whatever they may be.
August 12, 2007 - 1:34 AM Sunday
So today we discussed my grandfather's mortality.
It's a really weird feeling to be asked my opinion on how large or small the ceremony should be. I mean, when I was younger, my grandpa meant the world to me. I was his favorite, and he was mine. But starting when I was 14, he's slowly become this angry, crippled version of himself, with boundless cruelty towards my grandmother's sensibilities. Vicodin addiction, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries have addled his body and brain, and lung cancer has eaten away at the grandpa I knew and loved and even admired. I see him three times a week, enduring his careless remarks about my practically immaculate grandmother's inadequacy as wife and home maker, pushing him around the house in a wheel chair, and sifting through theories as to why he is no longer the Grandpa Paul he used to be; the Grandpa Paul he ought to have been all these years. And tonight, as my family and I take another step towards the climax of this story, we discussed how no one would come to his funeral.
My confession is that tonight I think I finally realized that my grandpa is going to die. Probably before Christmas. And even though I know I'll miss him, and regret not saying or doing or asking things, part of me can't wait for him to go. Some part of me thinks that maybe, when his spirit is free of the physical prison his body's become, he'll rediscover what it was that made us love him. Maybe he'll meet his God and find the happiness he could never seem to find with us. Maybe he'll be granted a chance to go back in time and see into all of our heads and know that even though we sometimes can't stand him, we tried to do everything. And if nothing else, at least there won't be any more pain.
Not for him, and hopefully not for my grandma. Make no mistake, I love her just as dearly, if not moreso. If there were two people on this planet aside from my parents who deserved credit for my being who I am, it's my grandparents, and most of all my Grandma Jean. She is truly a thing to behold. Perhaps not immaculate, no, no one is perfect. But she has suffered more than any of us this last year and five months, as she has lived side by side with a withering man and the invisible parasite that is slowly eating him away. How gracefully she handles her ever-changing lifestyle after 52 solid years of sameness is remarkable, and her pain and confusion make you admire her more, because every last one of us has given up on trying to make him happy for a few hours a week. She does it every single day.
And so life continues along the same path it always did. Living, and dying, and coping with pain, and just trying to love the things we don't understand.
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August 20, 2007 - 1:36 PM Monday
Mortuaries. This Saturday.
Things are going simultaneously faster and slower than I anticipated. Part of me says it's any minute now, and other, equally rational parts suggest it'll be months. One very cynical part says he'll probably go on my birthday. ... It's a very cynical part.
The vast unknown stretches ahead. But even as I think it I know I'm just romanticizing the whole ordeal. Life goes on, no matter how strongly you wish for it to stop. |
August 23, 2007 - 4:46 PM Thursday; "Blasphemy"
I want God to write a song about me. I want him to look inside me and collect all the little bits that have fallen apart and fix them; I want him to look at me and lie to me and tell me how beautiful the rest of my life is bound to be, because honey, you've been doing so well with this.
I don't want him to say he's sorry. I don't want him to lie to me about that.
I had a dream about Grandpa. It was actually about the whole family. We were in [grandma's] old house [in Wheatland] and, I recall, as I was walking from the hallway into the living room, I saw him lying on the couch, asleep, with Grandma at his side. The clock chimed 5 PM, and he mumbled in his sleep that he had to drive "50 miles tonight." And he made to get up, like he wasn't sick anymore, like he could walk without his wheelchair or his walker or his cane or anything, he got up like anyone would get up, only with more vigor because he was on a mission. And then he took a step with the momentum, and then he took another step, and suddenly
he went limp, like he was numb in his left side, or like he had fallen asleep mid-step, or maybe worse, and he started to fall. And all I could do to save him was stick out my leg or my arm and try to catch him, but he fell anyway, he fell, he went down, only my foot or my hand slowed him a little, and he hit his head on the floor, and he said, "Ow," but so plaintively, and he closed his eyes with the pain but he didn't move, and I felt like it was my fault that I let him fall and I cried and I was so scared that I hurt him. That I let him get hurt.
I woke up. I laid there for a while thinking about my family. I imagined to myself what I might be like when he dies. I imagined everyone in the same room, all standing around and somber. I lost it a little bit and turned on them, in my head, and I yelled at them. I said to them that none of them had better do to me what Grandpa had done. I threatened them that I wouldn't help them, I wouldn't let them sit in wheelchairs and be pushed to the finish line. I expect each and every one of them to walk out of Life on their own two feet, and in my head my dad rushed at me and comforted me and let me deny that it had ever happened at all.
I stopped imagining that, because I knew it would never happen. I would probably not lose it, or I would probably not be in the room when it happened, and anyway, it would be a lie. I would always help my grandma. As for the rest of them, I would probably help them, too, but I would do it faster if they could let God know I want him to write a song about me.
I talked to Grandpa today. I went into the room where he's confined himself to and I just talked to him. I told him what news I had heard from various sectors of my life. [-----}'s interview, my school, my other grandpa, too, and the weather. Always the weather. He made sure I had enough gas in my car, and told me to let him know when I needed more. I wonder if I can manage. He told me he loved me, and part of me cracked in two.
As I was leaving, I thought about things like karma and luck and fate and things that don't really matter. But I sometimes feel like I'm being followed by something like one of them, maybe Luck. Like Luck has been following me and watching me and playing hide-and-seek with me, waiting for me to turn around at the right moments and catch him at it. And this little child-like alien called Luck would give me the greatest gift of all, if only I'd turn around, maybe a few extra years of childhood bliss; but I don't have the courage to turn around and see it. Maybe I just want it to follow me for the rest of my life, and when I'm ready, when I've taken every hit my life has to throw at me, maybe then I'll turn around and it'll be that song God wrote about me. |
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August 25, 2007 - 12:48 AM Saturday
I learned something this evening again. The learning part is nothing new, but the realization has been a long time coming. I talked with my aunt about Grandpa, about who he is now, and about who he used to be. She's had a lot more time to get to know him than I have, just as I've had more time to get to know him than [her daughter] Claire has, so the opportunity to compare notes on the man we're all agonizing over is appreciable.
He is definitely human. If anything I've written down or thought to myself or said out loud or witnessed with my own eyes has been less than a testament to this, then the final proof of his dire humanity is what I learned tonight. He strove to prove himself. His desire to be the things he was not, to earn the praise of people who are no longer around to give it, is decidedly and irrefutably human. And his humanness, as it were, has reflected in the rest of us in different ways. After tonight, I now firmly believe that it was his desire that I should never feel the sting of unwantedness, of unworthiness, even if I deserved to feel it. And I have to say, it's granted me the unique ability to not usually desire to prove myself without warrant, to always feel like I'm something. Even if I haven't become that something yet, I'm something special in this world, and all it takes is me wanting to be that something in order to be it. I'm so gifted with worth and meaning that no punishment has ever been given to me that I did not earn, by simple virtue of deciding I wanted to do the wrong things.
It's a strange gift to give someone, really. I mean, I think I'll be alright. Somehow, life dealt me an ego that is decidedly under control. I joke around, sure, and I'm no less fragile than anyone else, but I'm no prima donna. I'm lazy, but I'm not a diva. It's funny, some people even think I'm wise beyond my years and bestowed with this dreadful insight into the workings of the universe and the hearts and minds of the ones I love. They might be right. However, mostly I think I'm just insightful enough to see past my own bullshit sometimes. That's a pretty fine thing, if you ask me. But this isn't what I really wanted to get at.
The current events have reminded me of a dream I had once, a long time ago. Or maybe it wasn't a dream, but a forcing of my subconscious, pinning it down and bullying it for answers. I was told, or I felt, or somehow divined, that the most important thing I'd ever do in my life was to master love; it was my task. And the more I take this new information into the context of the rest of my life, and the lives around me, the more this whole Love thing comes into focus and firmer reality.
Generational plotting, you might say, began when Grandpa first felt his desire to be loved more than he was. He worked himself to the bone to provide for his children, to be an honorable man, to have the grace of his God by his side. Then I look at my dad, and his insufferable and youthful cockiness, and I can begin to see how he could take Grandpa's striving for worth to indicate that he, the first male offspring, the recipient of the benefits of that hard work, was entitled to chasing worthless things for the purpose of satisfying his own thirst for love. Severe infatuations, good times, and better alcohol fuse together to bring him to this point in his life: at age 48, struggling to have things that matter, wishing for the things that passed him by, regretting the stupid mistakes and still making them somehow. And he, the father of just two, giving Grandpa an achievement to be proud of: the first grandkid. And maybe Grandpa felt like he should have done better with his second child, or maybe it just happened on accident, but he showered me with things I never knew I didn't always deserve. And when Dad left my life during those crucial, awkward, awful preteen years in so rough a manner, perhaps Grandpa felt a greater responsibility to lessen the sting. He could see clearly what his son could not, having already had his own shot at fatherhood, and became the constant, the rock, the foundation on which my fledgling adolescence was allowed to bloom. Father's mistakes with Son, and Son's mistakes with Daughter, have miraculously given over to a person who is completely and fully aware of love.
I certainly don't mean to dismiss my mom's considerable contribution to the person I've become, or my own fallibility. However, I can definitely look at my dad and grandpa and see how love has been, generationally, an issue to be conquered. And I think it's unique that, before ever knowing why, I devoted myself to conquering it. I can almost recall the moment it happened, some teenaged moment when I discovered that being angsty and angry and displeased with the world didn't make me feel any better about it; when I realized that the only thing I could ever possibly do about my flippant father was to just love him, in the hopes that one day he'd relax and realize I wasn't going to judge him, at least not unfairly, for the things he'd done.
I can see how this decision has led to most of the important events in my life. Coping with my sister's unruliness and uncouth manner was inspired by love and achieved through it. Learning that I could live without having teenaged love affairs led to my eventual conquering of high school. Reaffirming that there were other kinds of love than what I expected led to a hopeless infatuation with the most handsome dog ever to grace the planet. Finding out that you can put your love into inanimate objects led to my discovery of baking and general enthusiasm with art. And discovering the true meaning of familial love has led to the most troublesome period thus far in my adult life. When I sat in the chemotherapy room, after Grandpa levelled heavily unsultory words at Grandma, and after she finally fled the scene and left me alone with my ill-tempered grandpa, I discovered that I could still love both parties equally without giving up the opportunity to pressure him to judge himself and admit, if not recant, the error of his words. |
August 28, 2007 - 2:30 AM Tuesday - This Little Light of Mine
So now we start the round-the-clock vigils. Every few hours, one of us plays the Bringer, the Grim, the comforter at the end. Methadone and morphine and whatever else brings sleep.
This is the first time I've spent the night at my grandma's in a long time. I remember when spending the night meant bubble baths and ice cream and late nights watching tv and sleeping in grandma's beds that smelled like clean, and waking up to couche couche with syrup and milk. It also meant summer, and while the days now are certainly warm, they're not accompanied by the same inner warmth and carefree days that usually comes with it. The days when you go to bed feeling you gained something each day have been replaced by the anxious sense of expected loss and the fear that you might lose that something while you sleep.
But we're not even losing time anymore.
I wonder to myself, morbidly, if I'll even get to talk to him again. I got a taste of my nightmare tonight, when he mumbled in his sleep, when he looked at me without seeing me, and while I fought the urge to grab his hand and beg him to please see me. He keeps trying to yank out his oxygen tubes, and he keeps mumbling in his sleep, or nonsleep, or whatever state he happens to be in where he is simultaneously making sense and completely incomprehensible. But I can't sleep. At 2:30, I could hear him. I came in to look and all seemed calm, but as I tried to fall asleep again, I heard him even louder. So now I'm just watching. Replacing the tubes when they come out. Mumbling back at him sometimes. Just watching.
And now Grandma's awake, too. I guess that means I'll have to sleep now. Of course, without her hearing aids, it's useless to try and explain why I'm awake. She needs her sleep more than I do. I have the rest of my life to sleep in. I have already slept in enough to make up a few hours now. I even sleep when I'm not really tired. So I guess I shouldn't have much trouble now.
Edit:
And then I look at [-----], who sleeps peacefully under his own power, who is young and vital and everything a man at 22 ought to be, and I realize that even he scares the crap out of me. I'm beginning to wonder if it's just a guy thing.
Secondary Edit:
I wrote this all on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but I didn't get to post it in its entirety. I also did not go to sleep that night until 7 AM. Now I'm also making this public. |
August 31, 2007 - 5:09 PM Friday - Weve come a long, long way together
The final verdict is in. Only a few days left. We're starting to show our seams.
Grandma has had three of her mini-seizures in the space of a week. They're not the dramatic falling-down-and-shaking affairs that most epileptics treat themselves to. These are quiet moments, when she lets her guard down, when hand tremors creep in around the edges, and her mind throws words together out of order and sometimes throws in words that're unrelated altogether. And then she's tired. She's tired anyway, but it's a kind of tired she can't deny she feels.
She's more tired more often lately. I fear for her more than myself.
I haven't had much to say. Well, that's not true. I've had things to say, but they're nothing coherent. They're nothing too relevant, either. It's all just been sort of bound up in my head, wrapped around my heart. After a point, grief becomes a kind of protection from itself. Like if you grab a bit of it and surround yourself in it, you can make a shield and forge through the rest without falling apart. Like if you resist altogether, grief will do its best to crush you. And the grief will always win. |
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September 1, 2007 - 3:00 AM Saturday - Waiting
I can best be described as unwilling to commit to dreaming. Afraid to sleep. On the first day of the month of my birth, I am more than certain that I will lose my grandfather without ever talking to him again. Today is the day. The dread hour is upon us.
Or maybe it's just me.
Everyone in the house is sleeping, save the Cat, who is more than certain that I will feed him any moment. He is entertaining himself with the end of my pen. He is as determined to chew on it as I am to remain awake. Both of us are waiting.
I don't so much fear the grief itself as I do the climax of it. Grief is more fickle than the weather: shining happiness can be immediately followed by thunderous bellows of sorrow and torrential tears, or a tornado of everything all at once. Either way, total destruction of my already strained civility is imminent. (I'm quite certain this Cat has never seen anyone write on paper before.)
I held his hand tonight. I knelt by his bed and watched him sleeping, memorized the way the veins in his hand looked, and then watched the rest of my family from almost his vantage point. I could feel myself trying to break, but I resisted. Every now and then, his breath would skip a beat, and so would my heart, or sometimes my heart would race in an effort to keep him breathing so at least he wouldn't die right in front of me. I resisted even more.
As I described to a friend, it's like walking through a waterfall of pain. You can see it coming, you can brace yourself against it, you will be enveloped in it, but then you're out of the worst of it. It might take you a while to dry out, and some spots will stay wetter longer, but eventually, you're okay. That's what this grief, this pain, is like. I'm just not ready to go under yet.
I find I'm keeping myself close to writing tools. A laptop, some paper and pens; whatever I can get. In my mind, I even rewrite songs to reflect current events. Time the Revelator, I Dream A Highway, Underground, etc. They all reflect me, now. I do what I can. Because even if I don't admit it, my brain can't hold it all. I'm not like Grandma. I can't sleep either, but it's because of the things I see.
Like a hundred tiny red eyes suddenly opening in a face. Winking at each other. Knowing what to do next. The tumor is alive, awake, and ready to take control. It's time to end it now.
Or like one big yellow ball, covered in yellow spikes, like a tiny Sadist sun, squeezing its way into his lungs. And if only he were awake, he might have a chat with the sun, and know when [death] was avoidable no longer. And then when I wake up I sit back and wonder to myself who the sadist really is.
I asked my mom tonight why we do this out ourselves, why we love. My mother misunderstood me. It's not a question of IF I love the people who presently surround me. That I would do anything for any one of them is obvious. The question regards pain, and common sense, and why we so often disregard plain logic. Why? Why do I love you? Why, when I know perfectly well the pain you'll give me when you leave? Knowing that it'll hurt doesn't stop me from doing it. Becoming more attached to you just before you rip my heart out makes no logical sense. But I do it anyway, and ardently, with every fiber I have to offer. Completely intertwining the pleasure of loving and the pain of loss, it's so selfishly masochistic. It flouts logic in such complete ways. But I do my best to make sure it hurts like hell when you leave. I'll take out every loan The Bank of Life and Love will grant me, and I'll pour it into you. And why? It won't save you. It sure as hell won't save me.
But I know I'd be cheating myself if I didn't do it like this. If I didn't love you so much. I just wish, so selfishly, that you could hug me one more, one last time, and cement forever in my heart the things that will be missing for the rest of my life.
But God won't let me be selfish much longer. |
September 2, 2007 - 7:05 PM Sunday - Here we go.
This is it. This is it. This is it.
hahahahahahanervouslaughterhahahahahaha
fuck.
Edit (10:43): So we've said the rosary over him. He's still hanging in there, but. Yeah. |
September 3, 2007 - 1:03 PM Monday - Paul Elwood Dartez
Born in Louisiana on March 31st, 1931.
Died in his home in San Diego, CA on September 3rd, 2007, at 1:36 AM; Labor Day.
I'm not ready to be sad about you, Grandpa. I wish you didn't have to die the way you did. I wish Grandma didn't have to watch. I guess we'll get on alright. Things might be easier eventually. But I'm not ready. |
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September 14, 2007 - Friday - I got a little something for everyone and then a whole lot more for me.
I'm going to cop out in a minute and do a survey that no one will appreciate but me. But before I do that, I would like to express my thanks to those of you who have expressed your concern and sent thoughts and prayers: they have not gone unnoticed or unfelt. I would like to extend further thanks to still others of you who have had the immense displeasure of not merely reading this miserable blog but also suffering my impertinence and ill humor, and occasionally incessant whining. A few of you even experienced it along side me and, I'm sure, have your own thoughts to contribute. Thank you for letting me say all mine first before I ignored everything in pursuit of my own individual comfort.
Thank you for the birthday wishes to those who offered them, and to those who didn't, I take no offense; just be aware I'll be slightly less willing to bake for you later.
To my fantasy football league, none of whom read this trifling periodical, I thank you for letting me own you all so hard this week. Although it probably won't happen again, I greatly appreciated the chance to succeed at something I usually suck at without lifting a finger
To the rest of the world in general, I extend a cordial hand and pronounce that perhaps we can call it even for now. Just let me be the first to reneg on our truce this time, and I suppose we'll be okay.
And that about does it. Commence irrelevance.
1. If your doctor told you TODAY that you were pregnant, what would you say?
HAHAHAHA I'd sue for malpractice, and definitely win.
2. Do you trust all of your friends?
I don't trust any of them. That's why they're my friends.
3. Would you move to another state or country to be with the one you love?
He has done it for me, so I should only be as kind as to return the favor.
4. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?
I believe that we find reasons for everything that happens. If it comes to pass that even half the design we credit to the universe is more than just imagined, I'd be truly shocked. However, I cannot disclaim my own belief in a certain measure of intent, if only for my own comfort of mind.
5. Name two things you would NOT tolerate in a relationship?
Other people and violence.
6. Which one of your friends do you think would make the best doctor?
I would assign myself to that privelege, if I may be so bold.
7. Are you afraid of falling in love?
It's the falling out part that hurts.
8. Is there someone who pops into your mind at random times?
There is always something random popping into my head, and people not the least of them.
9. Would you stop talking to your friends because you hooked up with a new person?
I can't forsee that possibility in the slightest.
10. When was the last time you flew in a plane?
July.
11. What did the last text message you sent say?
"I'm at break."
12. What features do you find most attractive in the opposite sex?
Those which signify at least some glimmer of intelligence. And a nice ass.
13. Fill in the blank. I _______ jagerbombs.
am unacquainted with
14. What is a goal you would like to accomplish in the near future?
Mastering the art of soup/stew making, passing my classes successfully, mastering the ever elusive art of successful house keeping and reassembling my door knob (don't tell my land lord). There's a laundry list of other things as well, but those are the most pressing.
15. If you were to wake up from being in a coma for a long period of time who would you call?
Actually, I probably wouldn't call anyone for a while. I'd ask for a huge tome of a book to read and, upon conquering it, I would probably phone my mom (highest risk of having a heart attack or imploding), then Steve, then I'd just answer the phone calls from them having called everyone else.
16. How many kids do you want to have?
Two would be ideal, I think. But we'll have to wait and see on that measure.
17. Would you make a good parent?
How do you expect me to answer this without ever having tried it before?
18. Where was your default picture taken?
Back home, I assume in the front somewhere.
19. What's your middle name?
Rose.
20. Honestly, what's on your mind right now?
Tomorrow, Jane Austen, Grandma, the nature of the universe, and a large group of weirdos.
21. If you could go back in time and change something, what would it be?
If I went back and changed something, then I would not have the fortune of being so grateful for everything as I am this second. And I believe that in even asking the question, I submit myself to the kind of torture which only contemplating the what-may-have-beens and the will-not-ever-bes can so thoroughly provide.
22. Shoe size?
About 10.
23. What are you wearing right now?
a tank top and some comfortable bottoms and one strand of pearls. Would you like a DNA sample as well?
24. Righty or Lefty?
Right.
25. Can you make a dollar in change right now?
Sure.
26. Best place to eat?
Grandma's house, my house, and maybe a few other places.
27. Favorite jeans?
my gaps.
28. Favorite animal?
Annie, no matter how much you try, you cannot make a ladybug an animal. It is most definitely an insect.
29. Favorite juice?
Orange. Guava. Mango. Berry. Green Machine.
30. Have you had the chicken pox?
When I was a child, yes.
31. Have you had a sore throat?
Umm gay question... i think damn near everyone has (However more eloquent my response may have been, I nevertheless concur with this sentiment.)
32. Ever had plastic surgery?
No.
33. Who knows you the best?
Steve, that lovely creature with whom I spend approximately 148 hours every week with.
34. Do you get along with your family?
Depending on the season, yes.
35. Do you wear contact lenses or glasses?
Glasses, whenever I can be prevailed upon to wear them.
36. Ever been in a fight with your pet?
Not on purpose, I assure you.
37. Been to Mexico?
Yes, and it was a delight.
38. Did you buy something today?
Yes, I did.
39. Did you get sick today?
I did not, luckily.
40. Do you miss someone today?
As a consequence of being human, I did indeed.
41. Did you get in a fight with someone today?
It's a daily occurrence, given the 148 hours we spend together each week.
42. When is the last time you had a massage?
Too long.
43. Last person to lay in your bed?
Steve. As a matter of fact he's still in it.
44. Last person to see you cry?
Probably that person I spend 148 hours a week with.
45. What was the last TV show you watched?
I think it was something on the Noah's Ark story on the History Channel. I dunno. it's been a while. NO WAIT!! It was the Colbert Report.
46. What are your plans for the weekend?
Celebrate my birthday a little bit more, celebrate my getting a job, and then do some quiet reflecting and engross myself further in my novel.
47. Who do you think will repost this?
Who gives a shit.
48. Are you happy?
I am at a relative level of content.
49. Who was the last person you hung out with?
148 hours a week. Who do you think.
50. What are you doing tomorrow?
Picking up Gail from the airport. Other randomness. |
September 16, 2007 - 1:17 AM Sunday - the inside brain is made of fiberglass and cobwebs.
I discovered last night at a very inopportune moment that my mind is locking away all the terrifying parts about grandpa's death away in the same place where I keep all my super happy good feelings. It's really inconvenient to be in the middle of a really good time and all of a sudden recall all the minutest, wretched details of the unhappiest period in recent memory without the ability to stop yourself from it. It's like being pulled out of your body and into a nightmare.
And the worst part is that I can't get any of those haunting things that I know are there to loose themselves at any other time. I mean, I've tried. They've tried. When I'm upset about other things, and the memory of it all threatens to overwhelm, I'm suddenly recalled to reality by the impropriety of it and also by how much of a cop-out it might appear to be. And when I'm by myself, free from obligation to appear that I'm coping well, I can't come up with any emotion at all, unhappy or otherwise. I have managed an ill-timed ability to remove emotion from myself, as well as ill-timed propensity to catch myself off-guard. I can't seem to bring myself to face it, and that's almost as comforting as it is terifying. It's got to happen sooner or later and I'd rather have it happen while I'm still at home and safe. At the moment, all that seems to have changed is the frequency with which I think I see bugs out of the corner of my eye.
At any rate. It's weird to look around me and see some of Grandpa's stuff, knowing that he's never been here, or anywhere that I've lived in the last 6 years. Even though it was all given to me by Grandma or my aunt, it's so strange to see physically acknowledged an event my mind has yet to accept. It's really a case of knowing it, but not really knowing. Or maybe the right word is admitting it.
But, if nothing else, Halloween approaches. That this year will hold the same degree of celebration has yet to be seen. It may be subdued, may be ignored altogether. We shall see.
To bed with me. |
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November 9, 2007 - 11:14 PM Friday - deleted.
I want to delete myself from the internets. I'm done with it I don't want it anymore and I'm no good at it. I am a poor friend and a poor family member and I should be locked up and kept away from other people because, clearly, I am not good at them. Or for them. Or anything.
I saw a man at work the other day who, from behind, looked just like Grandpa. He was in a blue wheelchair, though. He pushed his palm against his forehead and pressed his hair down, just like grandpa, and I had to try so hard not to stare at him. I walked by and closed my eyes so I wouldn't be tempted to make sure. Something cracked. I didn't tell anyone.
I don't want anything anymore. I am slow and dumb and nothing fits and I'm not who I remember myself being. It's like I woke up one day 5 years in the future and I don't know why anything of this is happening. Someone asked me what am I doing after this, and I had to stop myself saying, "After what?" You know, what people say when they don't think there's anything after this. Or when this might be life, or the rest of it. I don't want my name. I don't want anything anymore.
i am tired and i am hungry and i am sick of sandwiches. |
May 3, 2008 - 12:25 AM Saturday - cobwebs
I feel like I'm moving through my day trapped in a sleeping bag. Like swimming through the fabric and trying to walk at the same time. So much effort, and so little to show.
My vision of the future is muddled. I want so much more than my future tells me I can have. Maybe I just need time, but maybe I've taken too much time, and there's no clear answer, no clear way forward. I can't keep going on this way and expect new, or different, results. But, at the same time, that's what everyone else wants me to think, and I'm wary to accept what they say. Perhaps I'm just being davka. Perhaps, but better to lead myself astray than to be led there by someone else.
I really have become selfish. When I think about whose team I'm on, I probably am the only person on it. Unfortunately for me and my greiving, the practicality of that mindset has diminished. Self preservation, which is handy when you have only one person to preserve, sort of starts to work against you when you want people to work with you. Competition has fueled me too much the last year-and-some-months; it's time to re-evaluate my priorities.
First, I'm going to go back to rarely drinking. I really don't enjoy it all that much, anyway.
Second, I'm going to challenge myself not to disagree with people who like ice cream. Everyone likes ice cream, or some derivitive thereof. Surely, if there was one thing that could bring about world peace and save us all, it would be a frosty flavorful treat. People who don't appreciate icy goodness are fair game, however.
Third, I am going to re-read my Zen books and recenter on the things that matter most in life, and not money or being right. Which is pretty much anything but money or being right.
Fourth, I need to remember that my lifestyle is not the only one that people can sustainably live by. I will stop trying to convince people that my way is the best way. Even though it clearly is.
Fifth, I'm going to stop pretending like I have a huge, insatiable ego. It's beginning to actually give me a huge, insatiable ego. Kind of like how you can think yourself into having a headache or cancer.
Sixth, I'm going to actually be funny.
I give myself three weeks to accomplish these six tasks, and if I manage it in two weeks, then I will buy myself ice cream. Or gelatto, because that sounds tasty. Then, I will enroll in at least one college course, because it's easier to tell people you're taking a night class than it is to tell people you've just been sitting on your ass all day watching movies and pretending to get laundry done.
I feel better already. |
September 5, 2008 - 4:33 PM Friday - Two days in either direction and you'd be screwed.
As of Wednesday this week, a year has passed since we last said good bye. The curtain of grief has lifted, albeit slowly, and sunshine has been allowed to pass into my head. My favorite memories of you have been illuminated, brought forward in a way that couldn't happen when you were alive, and though I haven't forgotten your spite, your addictions... time has made it easier to forgive. You taught me so much, and you will never be forgotten.
I got a letter from Grandma yesterday. I think of her every day, but I think it's funny that I have been able to separate you, break the bond I knew my whole life, and not think of you, too. There is never any insult intended. It's like your death was a cosmic divorce, and now you live on the other side of ... well, actually, that's attaching too much meaning. You've moved forward on the path toward whatever it is we all are waiting for. I hope, anyway. I'll see you again, I just have to finish my part of the journey. I can only hope that you are watching me when I make you proud. |
April 21, 2009 - Tuesday - 1:05 AM - Kathy Montez, My Mother
I am going to write, even though it's a very selfish thing to do. I just need to get some thoughts out of my head.
My mom. Hi, Mom. You're here with me, I can feel it. I can hear you and even though I'll always miss you, it makes me less sad to know you're here. I promise not to get hung up on you, but only if you promise not to get hung up on me. I love you, and anyway I was always more concerned with your well being. I mean, someone must have thought we were ready to move on without you, or you'd still be here. Losing you was so sudden, but I'm glad you didn't have to suffer through everything like Grandpa did. And I'm glad that I didn't have to see it. I get to remember you just like you are, happy and full of life and energy. And parties. You always brought the parties.
What's the most bizarre to me is that, through everything you've been through, all it took was a blood clot. That's it? But then, you never believed anything else could. Nothing was going to take you from me and Annie, you said. Not cancer, not lupus or scleroderma, not pain or arthritis. But I remember the fear in you about clots. I could hear it, but I just wanted you well. I wanted you to feel loved. I wanted you to be so taken care of.
I will build you a shrine in my heart in your honor, and it will be your house. You can live next to me when I am rich and famous and you'll have maid service and relaxing days in the sun by the beach, and I will carry the world inside my heart just to have it there for you. I will love the world so much more because of you. I will love it because I know you would have loved it, and because you have been in it. And I will show you things like you've never seen, and you'll be content, in your shrine, in my heart, in my body, until I die. And if I have made anyone love me the way I love you, I will die a happy woman. And when I meet you, on the other side, we will live together like old friends and see forever together, just like we knew we would.
I'll come up with more later. For now, I'm content to know you are walking with me every step of the way.
[Note: I did come up with more, which can be found {if you really wanna find it} at Facebook] |
April 22, 2009 - 8:00 PM Wednesday - Mom's First Obituary
From the Albuquerque Journal website, posted April 21st
Kathleen Marie Montez passed away Thursday, April 16, 2009 in Espanola at the age of 48. She is survived by her parents, Frank and Rosana Montez; boyfriend, David Wood; daughters, Alma Rose Montez Dartez and Mariana Simone Montez Dartez; brothers, Martin Montez and wife, Theresa, and Daniel Montez and wife, Dora; sister, Leticia Montez; and many nieces and nephews. A Memorial Service for Kathleen will be held on Tuesday evening, April 21, 2009 at 6:00 p.m. at the San Juan Church in San Juan Pueblo, NM. Funeral Services will be held on Saturday, May 9, 2009 at the St. Daniel's Catholic Church in Wheatland, CA. |
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April 26, 2009 - 10:09 PM Sunday
In our lives, we have been given gifts to use as we see fit. Based on your belief in a higher power, the nature and purpose for these gifts vary. For me, it's not the fact that we've been given these gifts that make us special among our fellow creatures, it's the free will that comes with them. No two people make the same choices, even given the same talents and tools. When the outcome is not dictated by tradition, expectation, or need, it is often unique and startling. This is the nature of free will.
I don't know what my gifts are. Well, I know generally wherein my talents lie, but the sum of these parts are obscured by my humanity. I have the gift of gab. I was given a lovely voice. I am trained in making a fool of myself for the sake of those around me. I am capable of love, and I am healed by it. I am blessed with a sense of direction, and a moral compass besides. And when these things have failed me, or if I have failed myself, I've had the ability to observe those around me. What that makes me as a whole, I don't know. Whether these things make me destined for poverty or prosperity, I don't pretend to know. But I do know that, since I have these things standard issue, it must be my job to use them.
I make a good effort at being humble. For the sake of being occassionally lively, I pretend to have an inflated ego and take part in ritual self-promotion before my friends and family. They tell me all the time how great they think I am, and while I know I'm no slouch, sometimes it gets to be too much. No one can be as great as all that. So, I take up my own banner just to get them off my back. I remain unconvinced that I am anything other than what has been put into me. What that means, I still don't know. What I wish for, when the night is quiet, and my mind isn't, is to be able to use my gifts for those who made me what I am without my humanity getting in the way.
What I have wished for everyone I have ever met is the ability to be well. I want to save everyone, and at the same time, I want them to save themselves. I want them to see the mess I am inside and be able to laugh with me at it. Look, I'd say. Isn't it pretty? I bet someone in New York is selling this right now for a million dollars. And then, I'd make them look inside themselves and see the same thing. I might be a mess, but I'm a beautiful one, they'd say.
I feel like a mirror, dropped on the ground. Everyone immediately thinks, oh no!, all that glass now shattered, all that mess, how much it must have cost to make, how much noise it must've made, how much it would hurt to cut yourself on it. But that's not how it feels at all. I've been dropped over and over and over again, and left to pick up the pieces. I've not always been left alone to do it, no, but when it comes to the self, the inner mind and the heart, there is no one else to fix you up. And even though some pieces are sharper than others, and some pieces are small and irregular, it's still me. All I feel is the freedom of it. No longer rigid, nor static, nor brittle, nor fragile. The smaller the pieces become, the easier they fit into my body; the easier it is to move without fear of breaking.
When I was whole, all I could do was reflect your image back to you. All I could show you was what you had already shown me. But now that I am broken, I have something to give. I can show you the shape of things. I can give you a glimpse into my heart. When it's broken, I can take the pieces of it and put it back together again. The more it breaks, the more it looks like a real heart, and the more lovely I become. When all my pieces are small enough, I can touch your heart and you will feel me, instead of broken glass. I will touch you, and maybe you will feel the freedom of being broken, the grace in saving yourself. You will look at your own pieces and love them, for they are the sum of all you'll ever have. And maybe, when you put them back together again in a new way, you will love them all the more, just for having them. You will feel freedom with me. When you do that, my wish will have come true. |
May 8, 2009 - 9:07 AM Friday - ...Like tearing seran wrap
I feel awkward inside. I feel brazen and stoic all at the same time. This is a new hurt. It started small and grew in me, like a parasite, but worse. I'm embarrassed of my sorrow.
Throwing rocks at my carefully constructed glass dam. Throwing stones, and making headway against all my precautions. Everything's about to come down around me. I want it up, I want it down. I want whatever quells the feeling that i've been punched several times in the stomach while sleeping. Tell me, who are you? Why are you here? What am I supposed to do with this? And how could you possibly....
I don't want any of you. I don't want your sympathy and I don't want your help and I don't want you to listen to me, because anything I say I'll regret in the morning. I'll regret everything I've ever done. Just like I regret this, now, and I haven't even finished it yet.
Send me away, like you did the last time. Let me drown in this. When I float back to the top, don't fish me out. Let me rot. Let this heart rot out of this chest and let the black bile run out of me like syrup. Maybe when I'm empty, when I give up my blood and my skin and my muscles and organs and especially this damn broken heart, when I'm nothing but bones, I'll get up and try it again. But I can't. I can't do this. I can't do this right now. I'm fighting and fighting and praying and praying and I can't breathe under all this heaviness. |
May 17, 2009 - 3:02 PM Sunday - You guys, i'm so fucking emo.
ok so. get this. I understand y'all are reading my blogs now. Thanks.
We need to talk.
I can't stop laughing at the idea that you all really think I'd do something horrible to myself. Honesty? Really, guys? You have no faith in me.
I like words, and they like me back. We use each other in new and interesting ways every day, and I have come to understand that some people people aren't okay with, or don't understand, the ways I choose to use my words. Part of it is that I have so many of them, and the other part is that I know how to use almost all of them. So, to spare people having to listen to me get all prosaic and whiny, I do this thing called "blogging" where I write a bunch of things and then leave it on the internet. I do it for catharsis. Sometimes the wound heals better when it can breathe, and this is what my last blog was about. I couldn't keep it covered up anymore, and I had to let it out. I'm sorry if I said it in a way that made you uncomfortable, but all the things worth feeling in this world aren't comfortable. Even love and desire are uncomfortable aches that gnaw at you: they just have more desirable beginnings (and typically more desirable results when you embrace them).
So, now, to gain a little insight into me, I'd like to point out that I did warn you about this. I said if you took me seriously, you'd make me regret saying the things I'd said. The unfortunate side affect is that, not only do I regret saying what I said, I'm beginning to regret my entire system. If you take that away from me, if you continue to take the things you read here and try to make them more than just writings, then I'll have to stop showing you at all. This thing is about me, and it's in a place where I'm relatively free of judgement. The very few comments I gather are about the only feedback I get, and I'm okay with that. I'm thrilled by that, actually, because no one comments ever. So this is my safe place... public, but safe.
Before I go, know that I really do thank you for your concern. If you're worried about me, however, call me or write me or leave me a comment directly. Don't spread rumors about my emotional instability just because you read something here. Don't believe everything you read, be it here or otherwise. You'll never really know unless you ask me, and I'm not going to just delete myself from the internet every time my writings are no longer consistent with my mood. I love you people but you need to relax and let a girl do her thing. Okay? No hard feelings? My aim is not to offend, just to clarify.
WWKD. Keep it in mind. |
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July 19, 2009 - 11:54 PM Sunday - I haven't done this in a while.
Hello, blog. How are you? Ready to be my super-public diary again?
OOoh god I'm so sick of my own head. I've spent so much time in it the last 3 months-ish, and especially unpleasantly in the last week, that I'm beginning to actually wish I could be somebody else for a moment, just to experience some different stimuli.
I am so stressed, and being inside my own head doesn't help. I'm about to make the biggest change to my life that I have ever made, and I'm literally terrified. I've ruined some really good things in my life recently, and why, you ask, astute reader? Because rather than have these wonderful feelings surround me, chaos seems like a better fucking idea.
No. No it isn't a better fucking idea. It doesn't really even seem that way, it's just the way my brain handles things. In order to tackle one fucking problem, I have to create another problem to avoid. It's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. And it came out of my own god damn mouth. If I were married to myself, I'd get a divorce. I'd break up with myself over this. But, failing that, I'm going to make everyone else break up with me.
Jesus. There isn't even anyone to break up with me. Oh, wait. How about we make things so unbearably uncomfortable that they rethink their previous professions of affection and loyalty? Hm? Sound like a plan? Sure! Let's alienate some friends while we're at it. Why the hell not.
I'm an emotional wreck lately. I don't know who's to blame. I can't keep my heart in my hands, beacuse i end up squeezing the life out of it. I can't keep it in my chest because it keeps jumping into my throat and out my mouth. I can't leave it at home, beacuse i spend my whole day thinking about how my heart must be doing, cold and lonely and unattended, and what if it does something to hurt itself while i'm gone? But who am I kidding, it's doing plenty to hurt itself already.
I miss my mom. I miss her violently some days, and so so passively others. I miss my family coming to visit. I miss my sense of self, my utter certainty and belief that what I was doing was right. It disappeared. I don't know what I did with it. I want it back! I'm unpacking boxes and sifting through old belongings every few nights just to see if maybe I'll find some glimmer of something that'll make it all worthwhile. I write my own name over and over again on things I own, on scraps of paper, the way I write the names of my crushes, to remind myself that I come first and I am precious and wonderful and deserving of my own praise, but I believe myself only half the time. Maybe I just need love, I tell myself. So I give myself some love, but it only lasts a little while. And then I'm back down again, foundering along the ground, wishing I had a better way of coping with the loss of the greatest love i have ever known from any human on the planet.
It's so dramatic to say it that way, I know, but it's true. There is no person on the entire planet who loved me more completely for who I am than my mother. She tempered my perfectionism and chastised my procrastination and encouraged my personal enlightenment and participated in guilty pleasures with me. She made me feel normal. Furthermore, she was the perfect confidant. I never ever doubted her loyalty or her motives. I never doubted that she loved me. I felt safe just being near her, even if I hadn't been previously scared. I just felt safe. She comforted me when I was upset, helped me find solutions to problems, and helped me see when a problem wasn't really a problem. She gave me what I needed, even when I didn't know it was what i needed.
I have searched, in vain, for someone who could give me all the things she gave me, and I have failed on every count. My friends, those poor unsuspecting fools, offered me their comfort, and even at their best, I remain unconsoled. I have searched for love from complete strangers as well as family and the odd interested boy, and none of them have matched my need. I have tried to drown out my grief with loud music and singing, to varying degrees of success, but it always comes back. I have tried to bleed out the misery onto paper, with art or with words, but the clots come too quickly and I never get it all out, and I'm poisoned with it again. And worst, I am shamed by what I create.
I am lost and lonely and heartbroken; I am losing hope in myself, I feel bare down to my bones, and I don't know, this time, how to bring my pieces back together.
Oh, momma, momma, i miss you.... |
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