Tag: grief

Well, That was Painful

I did a little funeral planning today. My step daughter, Bellana, is going to sing a song at the service and I had to call the parish musical director to get a copy of the arrangement. I mentioned whose funeral it was and she got all sad. She knew my parents and extended her condolences. She said she hoped my mother was doing okay.

Well, in her defense, my parents stopped going to this church when they moved out of town about three years ago. The music director hadn’t seen or heard from them at all over that time. While my mother’s funeral a year and a half ago was in this very same church, I did not expect her to remember that.

Still… I’m already feeling pretty low over losing my father but then to have to share that my mother’s been gone for over a year. Yeah, that was a bit of a gut punch. Ouch, babie. Ouch.

Dad’s wake is the day after tomorrow. The funeral is the day after that.

Cardinal

My wife bought a new ornament for our christmas tree. It’s a cardinal. She said that cardinals can represent people who have passed away trying to communicate with us. Having a cardinal on our christmas tree is a way to have my mother be with us this christmas. I nearly teared up when she gave it to me.

I love my wife so much. She is amazing. She is my rock. I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the past few years without her.

98/365

Happy/Sad or Sad/Happy or Both?

My sister just got word that my mother’s headstone has been installed. I can’t decide if that is happy news or sad news or both. Both, I think.

I will actually be near the cemetery for a doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully the timing will work out and I can pay a quick visit before it gets dark.

Sad Moment of Forgetting

Two days ago the daily writing prompt thing asked about our favorite subject in school. I wrote a little snippet about my favorite subject in Kindergarten being The Letter People. I couldn’t remember if The Letter People (anthropomorphized cartoon letters of the English alphabet) were cardboard cutouts or inflatables.

As I wrote about not being able to remember I thought to myself that I would ask my mother if she remembered. She did some volunteer work in my Kindergarten class.

Of course it took a few milliseconds for me to remember that my mother is no longer with us. She passed away about nine months ago. That was the first emotional kick to the groin. The second came another millisecond later when I thought that it had been years since my mother’s dementia would have allowed her to recall something insignificant like this from over 40 years ago.

I don’t know why I am posting this. I told Jen about it yesterday because it made me sad and I try to share my feelings with the woman I love. Now? I guess I just miss my mother.

Services

I am working in the office today. I’ve had a few meetings and I just wrapped up my lunch. I have another meeting booked for 45 minutes from now but I will be leaving for the day shortly after it starts. Today is my Uncle Jim’s wake. It’s actually a lot closer to my office building than it is to home so working from here actually makes getting there a ton easier. Otherwise I probably would have taken the whole day off. I took tomorrow off as I will be going to the funeral in the morning.

It’s so sad the way my mother’s family has fallen apart over the last year. Three of the four siblings passed away within nine months of each other. Only the baby in the family is left and she has some health concerns of her own. It’s been a tough year for the extended family. I am one of 22 first cousins and most of us are on a facebook messenger chat together. Anytime I get a notification of an update to that chat I get scared. It shouldn’t be like that, but it is. Hopefully we can all find a way to generate some happy news in the next year. I don’t know how, but maybe we can figure it out.

Speaking of happier news, Harry is coming home tonight. He needs to have some work done on his car and he is taking it to a shop near us because he couldn’t find a shop near Burlington, VT that could schedule him any time soon. We’re not sure how long he’ll be home. It will be at least as long as the car fix takes. Hopefully he’ll watch a Doctor Who or two with me. I bet I can talk him into it.

Okay, lunch break is over. Time to go back to work for the shortened afternoon.