My calendar proceeds from Wednesday to Wednesday: City Council meeting day. Sometimes I wish for Friday-to-Friday weeks, marked by rom-com pizza-and-salad nights; or restful Sunday-to-Sunday Sabbaths. Today, I am thinking, Her funeral was last Saturday, and for a while, at least, I will measure my weeks from Saturday to Saturday. Wednesdays, however, will continue to dominate, for news of Sarah's death clobbered me just as City Council meeting began, and I bolted before the pledge of allegiance without offering explanation or excuse. Now I face the long heavy haul of life without her. I have moved from feeling sad and tender and loved and lifted by a million prayers to feeling plain pissed off. "You might as well know," I told them, "I am so angry she is gone!" "Me too!" chimed in Mom. Sarah was my cheerleader! (She was everyone's cheerleader.) She left us! Anger, too, is part of grief. For the first time, Dad put his own grief into words: a huge hole; a void; an emptiness; a great longing and loss. Neither he nor Mom can look at her picture. Mom begged me to take her for a drive "around the block," and when we drove out into the sun, she said "Thank you!" and cried. "I really needed to see the sun!" After, I hiked five fast miles in icy Dimple Dell, trying to work off my anger and anxiety. The depth of my grief may be an expression of the depth of my love, but I was just fine loving her here! Dad has been hopping from one consuming anxiety to another. We need more flowers for the funeral. We need to make room for anyone that wants to stay at our house. We need to send the funeral details to everyone that doesn't have a Facebook, because not everyone has a Facebook, you know. We need to make a menu, like spaghetti, or chili, or meatballs, and go shopping for all the family coming. Roger, you must speak at the funeral. How will they pay the mortgage, the tuition, the grocery bills, the premiums? We need to know if there is a will. We need…. We have reasoned and to reassured, and have tried to preempt his worries with solutions, or at least diligent efforts to find solutions. Still, he perseverates about everything outside his control, precisely because everything is outside his control. He has always been the great family patriarch, the fixer, the benefactor, the provider, the safety net. Now, his physical world has shrunk to a brown corduroy recliner from which he cannot fix anything, and his brain bounces from worry to worry, increasingly muddled by dementia. The other night he awoke with a great searing pain racing across his brain, left to right: "It felt like a spear had been thrown through my head!" Since Sarah's death, and since the great pain, his memory has worsened—even he notices—and he is weaker than ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment