Now I know why so many people around my age are writing or shooting movies about the death of a parent. It's so surreal. The out-of-body-like experience of having so many people in your parents' home that you don't know very well, if at all; the feeling of numbness from emotional exhaustion that sets in and makes you feel so awkward and heartless; the moments where you are trying to solve a problem like "what would she want to wear in her casket?!?" and your brain freezes for a fraction of a second and you think, "let's just call her and ask!" and then you realize that you can't. Picking out clothes for your mother to wear for her burial is indescribably surreal. "Do we put shoes on her?" "No one will see her feet..." "But she was always cold." ... "Let's put socks or slippers on her, at least."
Reading her final wishes was heartwrenching and funny — things like the kind of casket ("not frou frou, but no pine boxes!") and where she wants to be buried and then the specific gifts directive of who gets what. You have to be able to handle it, for your family and yourself, so you have to kind of detach yourself, but it's also like a knife to the chest, so then you break down and sob uncontrollably in the shower.
Other weird stuff:
- Finding all her reminder cards and canceling her appointments for the dentist, the hairdresser, the doctor. Having to tell them no, she won't be rescheduling, because she's passed away.
- Calling to see if it's too late to cancel an order for a pair of shoes that she ordered the day before she died. It was too late, so now my dad has to go through the pain of opening the box and getting the return label to send them back. Dammit.
- Finding her "to do" list for Friday, the day she died. Mundane things. Mom/wife things.
- Reading her death certificate. I mean: reading my MOM's death certificate?!?!? Seriously? This is unreal. It lists "Acute coronary syndrome" as the cause of death — what is that??? I've looked it up since then. All her symptoms that went on for days like nausea, vomiting, etc., are classic signs, but none of us knew that! Since her stroke 9 years ago, we've all been fearing another one, and then it's a heart attack that gets her.
My mother loved Thanksgiving, and we have to have it without her. Even worse — she LOVED, I mean *LOVED*, Christmas. What do we do for Christmas? I see all the cheesy Xmas stuff in the stores, and the fleeting "Mom would love that" thought pops up, then gets corrected to "Mom would have loved that" and then I start to cry. In public. I hate crying in public.
All in all, I'm holding up well, as are my sister and my dad. We all have our breakdown moments, of course. We're all exhausted. My main fear now is that I have pushed it down so far that I won't be able to get back to it and grieve. That I will appear to be heartless or uncaring. But right now a chink in the armor lets loose a flood of emotions that will drag me under. I'll write about all the services later - right now I just needed to get some of this off my chest. I seriously don't know how to deal with this.
Three words: Un fucking believable.
Labels: death, mom
