panther's lair

telling her that made me melt into a sobbing pool of sad- so there i was, crying, all teary-eyed, snot-nosed, and gasping for air. it occured to me that a large part of my problem right now is that i miss my daddy. i miss him. i want to talk to him, to hear his voice...the desparation with which i really want one of those paperweight frames with his picture in it- i just don't know. i feel like i HAVE to get one somehow. i need it.

i don't know why. i have other pictures of him- but the way they described it- i just...i must have one.

so i figured that if my heart wasn't into making my brain healthier today, i would at least try to feel my grief. i can often push it under the surface, tuck it away, try to hide it from others and pretend that all is well. that is necessary at times- or you can't function at all...but then i just start rejecting it basically. i get to a point where i don't want to cry anymore, so i try very hard to not think about things that will make me so sad...

but it stays there, and builds up. so i read some more of the book called fatherless women today, and there were so many parts of the chapter i read today that just made me break down into a sobbing mess. other parts didn't reduce me to tears, but they did ring true or make me think. a lot of it really hit home...

"Two years after her father's death, Anna is only now able to think about returning to work, and the mountains of bills and legal problems that her time off entailed have not served to make her return to the land of the living any easier. We get stuck in these passages toward acceptance, toward resolution; sometimes we need to take longer than others do, or than others understand."

even though it hasn't been two years for me, we already have problems from the bills that went unpaid during much of that time or the bills that we aren't currently making enough money to take care of...i can't imagine how hard it would be to try to fix all this after 2 years, so i suppose that is something to be thankful for. it also helps me realize that i am not a bad person for the way i am dealing everything.

"no matter what our age, when our fathers die we are losing Daddy."

i said this several entries ago- i remember it hit me that i often think of him as my daddy now, even though i never really called him that when growing up. it is odd- but after death, he became daddy.

"They become, in other words, childish and scared and irrational, even less the parents we want, just when we may be needing them to rise to the challenge of fatherhood one final time."

my dad wasn't the easiest patient- but he was by far not the worst (after reading in these books some people leave with grace, others are cranky, others may cry a lot...my dad was normally just quiet...but he did get irritable. but it wasn't that part that really got me, it was simply seeing him laying in that bed, his skin a horrid gray-yellow color...he was supposed to be strong...but he wasn't anymore. his elderly parents were providing care to him again, much like they must have when he was just a baby...even though i have said that time and time again- this is something that i am really having a hard time with. my daddy was not supposed to look like that, he wasn't supposed to sound like that- unable to speak loud and clear as normal- but he spoke in a muffled mumble. he wasn't supposed to just lay there like that. he had to have help putting his teeth in (the man hadn't had teeth for years- so he wore dentures)...he needed so much help. once he was one of the handiest people i had ever known, and very independent too. but in that bed...god, that just wasn't my dad.

but then at times, he was very much himself- stubbornly trying to get out of bed even though he couldn't, trying to con us all into giving him cigarettes or into sneaking him out of there. getting cranky, using phrases like "rabbit-ass mind" and stuff. looking at us and sticking his tongue out, or flashing a brief smile.

so he was just enough himself to make it real to me that it really was him there- in spite of the fact that it was all so wrong. so real, and so wrong. it was also hard because in so many ways my dad was already gone, yet he was still laying right there...it is a confusing, horrible situation to be certain.

"Especially for those of us who saw our fathers' lives reduced through weakness or the daily humiliations that accompany diseases like Alzheimer's, we may have longed for the relief that death would bring. The cessation of pain and fear became a positive, a longed-for conclusion. When it came, however, it usually brought an accompanying load of guilt and shame."

similarly

"We didn't want him to die, but we wanted him to be free of any more pain. I felt a lot of guilt for wanting him to go, and thought it was selfish of me, that I did not want to have to deal with it anymore. The combination of emotions is excruciating."

boy do i know about that. i remember i would sometimes almost wish he would hurry and die because i couldn't bear the suffering. i couldn't bear his suffering- that almost killed me. i also couldn't bear the suffering that my family was going through- caring for him, watching him decline...i also couldn't bear the suffering myself- i felt like i couldn't start to mourn him when he was still there- but i couldn't ever heal until i mourned...

when he did die- i was immediately relieved, and extremely sad. but i was relieved that he wasn't in pain anymore, and that my family could now begin the long road to getting better themselves. but god the guilt- i don't usually dwell on this or anything, but i do feel guilty for basically wishing he would die. because that isn't what i really wanted. what i really wanted was for my dad to just get better and for things to go back to the way they were before he got really bad off. but as that wouldn't ever happen, it seemed that death was the next best option. i still believe that- that it is good he isn't in pain, or having to deal with the humiliation of being taken care of so completely, or of not being able to go outdoors and do things he enjoyed. but i still feel guilty because i feel like i wanted him to die- and that is a hard pill to swallow.