You are currently browsing the Family category.
I have stopped sobbing now.Previously I only had to think of my Mother and I would start to sob. The tears would flow for five minutes or so and then I would be right.Ten minutes later I would start again.
I have a zillion half written posts in my drafts folder. Posts that start off like this.
All I want to do at the moment is crawl into my bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend the real world doesn’t exist. Yesterday by three o’clock in the afternoon I was knackered and the idea of just going to bed was so tempting, that I very nearly did just that. Sometimes I think that Eliza Bennett’s mother in Pride and Prejudice had the right idea when she just declared it,” All too much!” and took to her bed.
I want to ring my Grandmother to see how she is going but every time I even think about my Nan I start to cry.
Then there were posts like this one.
I am sitting here in the dark trying desperately not to think about the lump in my daughter’s breast. Ha! Epic fail.There are two distinct voices in my head, one is telling me that everything is going to be okay. Von is breastfeeding. She found the lump early. We have a history of fatty lumps. Don’t panic.
The other is the voice of pure terror and it is whispering the words, my daughter might have breast cancer, over and over at me. I truly don’t know if I have the strength to deal with a cancerous lump right at this moment in time.
I was supposed to return to Tafe that week but I went to the ultrasound with Veronica and Nathan instead. I cannot even begin to describe the relief that I felt when Vonnie was given the all clear. It was just a fatty lump. YAY.
We then went to visit my Grandmother, herself a breast cancer survivor. I hadn’t seen my Nan since the funeral and I couldn’t stop my tears. Nan held me close and I sobbed like a child bereft.
We three women who had been there at the end, sat and talked and cried. We shared our pain and our memories. Nan talked about Mum’s first day at school and we consoled each other with our recollections. With each memory shared and each tear shed we affirmed our love, not just for Mum but for each other. Our visit started with tears and ended with laughter.
It has been 25 days since my Mother died and the sharp edge of my grief is changing into a softer ache.
My Mother loved to cook and I have her cookbooks here with me. I am using Mum’s saucepans and her oven mitts hang in my kitchen. Small things of Mum’s that give me a great deal of comfort and pleasure.
I was using Mum’s pots the other night and I had emptied a pan of spaghetti sauce that I had made into a bowl. Harry the dog was looking at the pot longingly, hoping to lick the bowl.I distinctly heard my Mother telling me, “Don’t even think about it Kimmy!” I smiled to myself as I did as I was told and put the pan on the sink to be washed.
Isaac had a seizure on Thursday and we are waiting to see if he has epilepsy, or if it is related to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome as well. When Veronica rang me and said she was in the hospital with Isaac, my first thought was, right I will just let Mum know. Then I remembered and I sighed with sadness but I didn’t start to cry.
Life is slowly returning to a familiar rythym. David is back at school. I have returned to my studies. The house is full of clay and Jeffrey is growling about the mess I make. Things are as normal as they can be and I am starting to think about picking up my camera again. I have pots in my head screaming to be made and Barbara’s bum is morphing into a ladybird instead of a stag beetle. I am still not dreaming but I know my dreams will return and when they do I will follow them.
This time last week I was waiting for the teenagers to arrive and fill my house with noise and music, laughter and muddy footprints.
I survived the sleep-over, though none of the teens actually slept. They stayed up all night watching DVDs and shooting aliens.
I fed the teenagers into submission. They groaned and rolled their eyeballs, they pleaded with me to stop but I didn’t listen. I just kept on taking food into the ‘party zone’. My weapons of mass distension were simple but effective. Pizza and hot chips, combined with timtams, twisties and lollies. Washed down with a gazillion cans of coke and lemonade. I had icecream and marshmallows in reserve if I needed reinforcements but it seems that the final packet of tim tams was enough. Throw an XBox and an eightball table into the mix and a good time was had by all.
Last week I was running on nervous energy. There were a zillion things to be done and very little time to do them in. My phone ran hot, my inbox was full and I was in a state of perpetual motion.
Yesterday was the first time that I didn’t have to drive anywhere or do anything.
So I stayed home and cried.
I cried for my brother who has taken all Mum’s photos. I hope they ease his pain.
I cried for my children who have lost their Grandmother.
I cried for Amy who knows something is wrong but she doesn’t know what.
I cried for myself.
I am going to build a garden for Mum. Thinking about Mum’s garden makes me smile. Mum wanted her ashes buried up here and we talked about her garden a lot.Planning Mum’s garden together gave us something practical to think about so that both of us didn’t drown in our sorrow.
I will listen for your voice on the breeze. I will look for your face in the stars. I will see you dancing with the clouds and I will hold you in my heart.
I love you Mum.
When I drank, I drank a lot. I always maintained that I was a beeraholic not an alcoholic because there was wine in the cupboard and half a bottle of vodka on the shelf and surely if I was an alcoholic I would drink those as well.Wouldn’t I?
I wouldn’t have a beer until I was sure that I didn’t have to drive any where. I never drank and drive. Not because of any respect for the law but because I was crap at drink driving. The one time I drove drunk, I crashed the car. You really need lots of practice to be a good drunk driver and I am not that dedicated.
My blog personality is how I am in real life. I am funny and sweet, I am generous to a fault and I really am quite a nice person. I am well read and I can discuss anything from the breeding habits of snails to the reasons behind the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.I am impatient and demanding. My way is the best way(naturally.) I am opinionated and very loud. I am a control freak who doesn’t know how to delegate. I say outrageous things just for fun. Politically I am so far to the left that it is a wonder I dont walk with a tilt. I dont suffer fools and I will tell you, if you give me the shits.
I used to gather up strangers(mostly tourists) and bring them home for a meal but Jeffrey made me stop doing that. I pick up interesting looking hitch-hikers and sometimes I drive further than I intended because I am enjoying the conversation.Children and animals love me and I am a natural born storyteller.I could sell ice to eskimoes.I like to talk and sometimes I forget to listen. I am an Aquarian fire horse and when I am angry I stamp my foot and my nostrils flare, I fire up and explode. Then I am done and my anger is forgotten and I expect every one else to forgive and forget as quickly as I do.
Alcohol magnified all those traits by 100 and you either loved me or hated me. There was no middle ground. As a result I have some very very good friends and lots of aquaintances that think I am an arsehole.
I stopped drinking in April 2008. Anzac day is always a very emotional day for me and I would generally get rotten. I had been drinking beer all day and had topped up with nips of neat whiskey. That night I was a belligerent drunk and I had a nasty fight with my son. David walked down to his Nan’s at 1 am with me screaming at him to get back home and dont you walk away from me etc etc.
I woke up the next morning knowing something BAD had happened and then I started to remember bits and pieces of what had happened. Oh Shit.
I put off ringing Mum for as long as I could because I knew she would be furious with me. When I finally was brave enough to pick up the phone she didn’t disappoint one little bit. Furious wasn’t the word. Mums anger was icy and terrible.
David came home later on that day and I apologised to him and we held each other close.
I didn’t make a conscious decision that day not to drink again, it just sort of happened. One day turned into two, turned into a week turned into a month. When people would ask me why I had stopped drinking, I would make some flippant reply because I was ashamed of the real reason I stopped. I had done something that I swore I would never do, I had become my father.I had hurt my son. Luckily the damage wasn’t irrepairable but his wounds were deep.
I avoided my Mother because I was ashamed. I reluctantly visited her on Mothers day and we didn’t speak about Anzac day but it was there, the elephant in the room.
Six weeks later Mum was diagnosed with cancer and there is nothing like a life threatening illness to make you sort out your priorities. The elephant vanished with a pop and we embarked upon the next stage of our relationship.
I dont know how many times I said to Veronica. “I am so pleased that I am not drinking” and her reply was always, “We are so pleased you are not drinking as well.”
to be continued…
I know that today is Tuesday. The funeral is today. It is also David’s birthday today. But since Mum died last week, my brain has seriously gone on holiday and I find myself regularly asking, “What day is it today?”
Organising a funeral is horrible. Mum and I had talked about her funeral, we had even gone to a funeral home together where I listened, as Mum talked about the music she wanted, the flowers that she liked and all the millions of small details.
We met with the celebrant(?) yesterday and I was under the impression that he would ask us questions about Mum and then he would write the Eulogy from the notes we had given him. Apparently not *sigh*
Luckily Mum’s favourite little Japanese tea rooms were close by. So my brother and his son Hayden along with Vonnie and myself brainstormed over lunch. My brother was left with the task of typing it up into a coherent Eulogy, which he would email to me, Vonnie and I would add any bits we thought of, email it back to Mick and he would email it to the celebrant.
AAAAAAARRRGHHHHHHH!!!!!!
This is really, really hard.
Today is also David’s 15th birthday. We are burying his Grandmother on his birthday. Oh shit. What the fuck was I thinking? Dont answer that ok.
I have tried really hard to make this last week as normal for Dave as possible but of course there is nothing really that I can do to distract him from his heart-ache, except hold him and try not to yell at him when he slams my doors.
I will just have to trust that everything will be all right for my son eventually.
Think of us today at three o’clock.
It has been raining steadily here for days now and everything is very soggy. The paths have turned to a muddy black mush.The water tanks are overflowing and in the middle of the night, Jeff’s shed and Dave’s bedroom floor suffered minor flood damage. Not enough to cause any real damage, just enough to be a soggy,soggy nuisance.
I am expecting a horde of ravenous teenagers up here tomorrow to celebrate Dave’s birthday,(which is on Tuesday, the day of Mum’s funeral *sigh*) I am deliberately not thinking about the mud that will be tracked through the house via the shed (eeek).
Dave’s original plan was to have his friends, who are all city kids come up here and camp in the bush. Tents, campfires, junkfood and a large bonfire and ‘voila’ with the minimum of fuss, a good time is had by all .
Except that it is the middle of winter and it wont stop raining.
So now the modified plan is for the kids to all cram into Dave’s room as well as take over Jeff’s shed. Jeff is understandably less than thrilled at the prospect of his space being filled with strange teenagers. All I can do at the moment is try not to think about it too much.
I have bought essential supplies as per the list David gave me. Coke, pizza, chippies and ice-cream, seem to have all the essential food groups covered.
Think of me tomorrow. I will be the one rocking in the corner.
