"abrasive" Parents?

[Gigi-T]

Way to go, Shari! I wish you all the success in the world, and I won't hate you when you get it, like some people do.

I know my dad wanted to live for my sake and for his own. As he was dying, the hardest part was when his brow became furrowed, like he was trying to wake up, but he couldn't. These moments didn't last long, but I felt like he was being killed by the morphine and there was nothing I could do. I think it was his own body's toxins that were killing him, because of the kidney failure. I cried before and after he died, but only in short bursts. I was numb for a couple of months. I did not cry at his funeral, which disturbed me and my relatives. I was very sad but could not find release. However, in the last two months, I've been crying more often and more intensely than before. I'm glad I'm going to see my counselor tomorrow, because I have no one to talk to here, and my relatives don't have much time for me.

The whole ordeal of watching my dad die seemed unreal. As I looked out the hospital window watching day turn into night, I felt like the world was foreign to me -- like I wasn't connected to it anymore. I had the same feeling when I went to the de Young museum last month. The observation tower is new, so I had never seen the view from up there before. I know that my father would have loved it. There's a 360 degree view of Golden Gate Park and the rest of San Francisco. As I looked down, I saw the familiar places I visited as a child, the Spreckels Temple of Music, the grove of trees on the concourse, USF where I went to school and Lone Mountain College where my mother attended, the spires of St. Ignatius Church....I was filled with a sense of weary nostalgia for my youth which didn't seem so long ago -- life is too short. I also observed the sphinx sculptures and the Pool of Enchantment. I imagined my little grandmother (she was 4' 11") sitting next to the left sphinx as she did in an old photo I have. What normally would have been an exciting view made me feel detached, like I was already dead. Is this how spirits see the world from above? I bought a mug with a view of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 on it. Why couldn't I have found this mug when my father was alive? He would have liked it -- we were both big fans of the Exposition. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at the books and photos of the fair with the same pleasure now that he's gone. I know it will get better, but it will never be the same.

A high school classmate got in touch with me on Facebook. She said she had the sudden urge to contact me (for the first time in 38 years), and she thinks maybe it was my father getting in touch with her. We had dinner together yesterday at my favorite Peruvian restaurant. I never tire of that place. She told me that after her mother died, she went to a spiritualist church and she wants me to go with her at their next meeting (tomorrow evening). She said when the clairvoyant selected her from the audience, suddenly everything went black and she saw rain -- inside the building. She said the clairvoyant told her a message from her mother and she really believes it was her mother's spirit communicating through the medium. Naturally, I'm skeptical, but also curious about this spiritualist church. I don't know what to believe, but I worry about some strange spirit following me home. My friend Ray has a brother with psychic ability who can see spirits. One day their other brother walked into a room and the psychic brother said to him, "Where have you been? You've brought a lot of spirits with you." He had just been in an antique shop looking at antiques that had spirits attached to them or some such thing.