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| From: |
Karen |
| Date: |
Saturday, July 05, 2008 12:47 AM ET |
| To: |
Gail |
| Subject: |
Re: Gail |
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Gail,
I see your're up late too (well it's ll:50 pm where I'm at on the east coast. I wish there's something profound I could say to you to help ease your pain. I'll just write what comes to my mind and maybe just hearing another voice will give you a little bit of comfort.
It's late and I'm tired after running after my three kids and everything else that gets crammed into a day. Only time to look at the board is at night sometimes. I saw your post and had to write.
I don't know what it's like to lose a husband,but I lost my mom last Sept. I found that even this Holiday made me a little sad. But usually it's not the major holidays, it's the little things like seeing someone my mom's age with her grandchildren at the store or the park ...all the things my mom did. Also, this time last year she was about to start hospice and all those dates are swirling around in my head. Like the last time she was in a car. I drove her home from her last doctor appt. and barely got her up the stairs (July 12th) and she was there in that bedroom right upstairs until she passed in Sept. I hear my dad in there now getting ready for bed. Sometimes I go in their room and sit on the edge of the bed. I look right at the spot where my mom passed. I remember last summer lying on her bed and she was lying in the hospital bed next to their bed. She would switch back and forth between beds because she said her best medicine was my dad with his arms around her. I remember studying her profile as she lay there in and out of two worlds. I told myself to never forget her face. Sometimes now I feel like I forget. I wish I could hear her voice. I haven't felt like looking at videos yet to see her and hear her voice again. The last words she spoke to me were right before she took her last breaths, she said "don't cry babies, don't cry" and then "Let go babies". We did get to say our I love you's earlier and I am eternally grateful for that gift, as I know many feel deprived as in the case of a sudden death.
And as I do on every 4th of July, I think about friends of my parents whose little boy was 7 years old and jumped into a swimming pool with a pretzel in his mouth and drowned at a 4th of July picnic. He was my exact age. He would've been 44. It's been 37 years...hard to believe. His parents did go on and kept busy with his five older brothers and sisters. They were at my mom's funeral last Oct.1 and have just sold their family home of 45 years. I imagine that was very difficult.
I think the best thing is for you to take baby steps. Maybe go over to your neighbors when it's a little quieter (not at a picnic with other people around). The husband probably meant well, after all he did offer his help. People often don't know what to say to someone who has just sufferred a loss and he was probably filling in an uncomfortable moment with talk about the chores he needs to do around the house. It doesn't mean that he was being insensitive. It's hard to wrap your mind around it, but everyone goes on with their lives. Someone posted recently about the odd sensation of others going about their lives when we are suffering. I remember walking into stores the day after my mom died looking for shoes and stockings for the kids to wear to the viewing and wanted to shout to everybody that my mom died last night!
Another time that totally took me off guard was a couple of months after my mom passed. My dad took some of her nicest clothes to a resale place. The rest he took to the Goodwill. I walked in looking for Halloween stuff for the kids and I saw my mom's bathing suit hanging on a rack ...first thing I saw. I must have switched to autopilot, it was surreal. To top it off, it seemed every woman there was with her mother. Things went dim and all I heard was Hey mom, what about this and what about this purse, etc. People just going about their lives. It just seemed so unfair. But this happens to all of us. I'm sure I was in a store somewhere sometime with my children and a man or woman behind me may have been thinking...I wish I had a child too or I wish my child wasn't taken so young, etc.
But, everybody goes through this. I guess this is part of the human experience. Nobody will escape the pain of losing someone they love at some point in their lives. You're right though,our time here on earth is a blink of an eye compared to eternity, although that doesn't always comfort us on this earthly plane. Our minds can understand something logically, however our hearts don't always follow suit.
Hope this helped a little...I wish for you a wonderful ADC soon. I'm hoping to visit with my mom tonight too. But she probably gave up on me, since I'm up so late...she would be telling me "Karen, you should get more sleep! You need to get to bed sooner...that I heard alot...oh I miss her so much.
Good night,
Love, Karen
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