Weepy Week

I'm not really certain that any of you in the blog-o-sphere care to hear each week's emotional update, but I guess you'll just have to deal with it because that's all I got for you. At some point during the third week I have lost my ability to distract myself. So I think the feelings are in essence the same as last week (and likely the week before), but now that the shock has worn off and the distractions can't hold a candle to the overwhelming sense of my life having made a major turn towards unhappy town (which by the way was NOT programmed into my life GPS unit), I am left with crying. Lots of crying. Far more than week 1 and 2 combined in fact. Not nearly as much as the week leading into mom's death, but definitely more than anything since. I've never carried tissues in my purse - this week there is a package of them there, and it's getting good use.

One of my friends sent me a book called 'Lament for a Son' written by a man after his son died at age 25. I picked it up last night and started reading for the mere fact that I felt the need for someone to show they knew how I was feeling, because I didn't know how to put in words how I was feeling other than awful. For a good portion of the book there was nothing too similar, but there on page 15 it was. And this is what he said, "It's the neverness that is so painful. Never again to be here with us - never to sit with us at table, never to travel with us, never to laugh with us, never to cry with us, never to embrace us...All the rest of our lives we must live without him. Only our death can stop the pain of his death. A month, a year, five years - with that I could live. But not this forever." Now, I'm not saying that I don't think I'll see her again, I know that I will see her in heaven, and truly that is my consolation. But to be quite blunt, I'm not in heaven, I'm on earth and I don't know how long I'm going to be here. So for all intents and purposes it is forever, as far as this specific reality is concerned.

That neverness is what I'm noticing this week. Take for instance yesterday when I was sitting in a meeting, minding my own business, trying to focus on work, and since I was in a meeting it was relatively easy because I could focus on what people were saying and such. And then a chick across the table from me opens up a container of greek yogurt. The exact greek yogurt that my mom specifically requested the week I was up there with her when we were in the hospital from the skin thing. And immediately my mind went to the conversations we had about the yogurt and then my mind went to us laughing about it and then my mind went to the very plain and simple reality that I will no longer have conversations or laughs with my mom. The fact that when I saw that yogurt last time I thought my mom was going to be ok, she was coming out of the scary GVH and she was going to be ok. But she's not. And I'm not. Yeah, guess who for some reason needed to get out of the room to get coffee IMMEDIATELY! Thank goodness I had a coffee cup so I had some semblance of sanity when I shot out of my chair and out the door.

Or Tuesday when I was walking through the grocery store trying to find the 4 things on my list and not being able to find any of them and thinking about a post I wrote one time about how it's so frustrating walking through grocery stores and not being able to find stuff, and the fact that my mom was laughing with me the next day saying that her and the people at work were "peeing their pants laughing" at my post, and thinking about the multiple times I would call her and say 'hey, where in the aisles do they usually keep such and such', little calls to say hi and hear her voice will never happen again. And suddenly the fact that I couldn't find soy sauce and there were too many options of cream cheese made me want to either have a temper tantrum on the floor or run out of the store screaming, neither of which a sane human being should do, and so I focused on getting the milk until someone passed me to ask about soy sauce and then I got out of there before I could start crying in the bread aisle or something.

Or the multiple times that I have thanked people who said they liked my shirt, everytime thinking my mom had bought it for me, in fact my mom has bought me most of my wardrobe and it reminded me that I would not longer get random little packages of a shirt of flip flops or a hair clip or purse, or whatever was "screaming my name" to her. The void of her in my life seems overwhelming this week. I went 10 days without talking to her when I was in Panama, I even went almost 2 weeks not talking to her when she was in Ghana. But hitting 3 weeks today officially makes this the longest I have not talked to my mom in my entire life. And it's taking it's toll on my sanity. Half of my brain is the kid who just got dropped off at the nursery and doesn't have any concept or understanding of time and has no idea when they will see their mom again. And the other half of my brain is trying to keep it together and not act like that kid in the nursery crying and screaming and throwing themselves on the floor in frustration and anger and confusion. It doesn't matter how many times the nursery worker whispers in their ear that their mommy is coming back, all they know at that moment is that their mommy isn't there.

I guess in week three I just really miss my mom.