Losing A Parent | Drovers Run

I hate to be what I call a ‘negative ninny’.

I loathe people who are consistently negative in their outlook on life, and aside from the occasional rant, for the most part, I post positive things.

Things that make me smile, that I want to share, things that are exciting and out of the ordinary.

Or hot guys. Because hey, everybody likes a hottie.

But right now I am struggling.

I wish that somehow this emotional rollercoaster was a surefire pathway to quick weight loss, but alas no.

I have forced the emotional rollercoaster to stop.

I have stopped communicating with my brother.

The last decade has been hard, I try to reinitiate some kind of communication, and well, he bites the hand that feeds the communication.

So I am done.

I am an only child.

But, I did find a sister, another sister and a brother. We share a father, and for what it’s worth, we get along fine. So I’m not really an only child, even though I am.

The other positive to have come out of this is that I am measurably closer to my cousins and my aunt in Holland.

They lost their father to cancer two years ago, and since I contacted them two weeks ago when the proverbial poo hit the fan, they, particularly the elder cousin who is 5 years older than me, has been a tower of emotional support. Several facebook messages, sms and emails ensued. Always there. Always supportive, always encouraging.

Trying to get on with daily life on the other hand is proving, problematic.

I do not feel like I am in mourning, but a line has been crossed somewhere a ‘before I lost a parent’ and an ‘after I lost a parent’ line has been drawn in the invisible sand, and I have crossed it.

I am older than I have ever been in my life.

The thought of that makes my limbs feel like lead.

Every breath that I take is an effort.

Trying to work, is hard. It has to be done, but it’s hard.

I should be putting good body fuel into my body.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, crisp healthy things.

But I can’t be arsed to cook. I make sure that the kids are fed, throw something together for the hubby and then proceed to stuff my face with the most unsuitable rubbish imaginable. It doesn’t help, I know this and yet I don’t seem to care.

This morning, in between doing some work, I was surfing for apartments in Leiden, Holland.

1 bedroom apartments to be exact.

What exactly am I doing?

I don’t exactly know, but the desire to run away from my life, with nothing but my camera and a laptop has become very, very attractive.

I suppose I imagine I’m running away, to reconnect with family.

But hello! I already have one that needs me here.

Which leaves me, in the words of Hugh Grant, in Notting Hill…

“Well…buggered.”

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Tags: Bereavement, Exhaustion, Holland, Losing a Parent

If you have not lost a parent then you have not sat by their bedside looking at them, just skeletons with skin. You have not experienced the godawful smell that accompanies that, that I cant get out of my nose right now.

To sit there and hear there words of denial as they try to convince themselves and you that they’re ‘fine now’ and ‘gosh, what a scare I thought I was a gonner for awhile’ and to know that THEY ARE just DAYS from the inevitable.

To sit and wonder if you should tell them they’re going to be fine or to keep quiet and then to silently obsess about the fact that your silence might speak volumes to them.

To wonder if you should cry and wail and tell them a million times over how much you love them no matter what they might have done in their lives, and as much as you may have written them off, because it might make them feel able to leave this world, and then to not do it because you realise that they don’t even know they’re that ill and doing that would make them panic about the fate that awaits them.

To sit at the fence between life and death and wish for it to just happen already so that you can go on with your life, and then to wish it away just as quickly because, well because it’s an awful thought and you shouldn’t have thought it in the first place.

To sit there and question every action in your own life knowing that one day this will be you, and are you making every second count?

If your spouse still has both parents then they are totally unable to comprehend what you are going through.

Which makes it even harder.

So when you overreact about the fact that, No, you haven’t done the dishes, and SO WHAT that when they respond with equal annoyance, that you simply have to forgive them that counter-reaction because they don’t know any better.

You know that one day when your spouses parents begin their demise that you will be the pinnacle of love and understanding because you’ve been here, and it all feels grossly unfair that you are drawing the short straw, and doing this first.

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Tags: Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Losing a Parent