If You're Going Through Hell

[Gin]

Joyce,

Me, too!!

[Margm]

Billy had a new tractor and Brianna always wanted to drive it too.  This is just how close those two were. Billy always used to say that she was his baby until she found Walmart, then she was Mamol's.  Nope, she was always his.  I think that is why she stays with me.   

[kayc]

Marg,

It is so hard watching your mom go, and especially when their mind is going, you never know how they'll be when you see them.  I was thankful for the good times, and sad for the other times.  There were times I'd drive 70 miles to see my mom, and she'd be like a zombie, never even know I was there or respond.  But most of the time, she knew me, even if she got my name mixed up with my sister's or didn't remember it at all.  That was okay, she had recognition, that was the important thing, she knew I was familiar.  And she appreciated my visits, something I'm not sure she always did before dementia.

My mom too, was extremely stubborn!   I think that's part of what kept her going until age 92.  I guess I got that from her...

[Margm]

I do not have any of my mystical-magical imagination yet.  I wonder if that is what I call faith also.  I look out  my window here in the apartment and across the street is the very nice swimming pool and community park with tables, trees.  I look up at the sky and I think about my dad saying to Scott "sometimes I look at it and I see blue, but at other times all I see is gray."  My sky is really blue, but it is also gray.  The crape myrtles are blooming.  They are pink.  In front of my former residence is a crape myrtle that Kelli planted three years ago.  Only tree in that yard. It is a rare deep red.  Across the street was a forest, a deep valley.  I am putting this on my "going through hell" posting because sometimes I feel I am infringing on someone else's if they start out with a different subject and I answer another post with a veering off of the main subject.  As we all feel we are "going through hell" then anything fits here. 

I have to go sit with my mom.  Brianna needs to go to doc with her earache.  Suddenlink is coming to hook up the other two TV's. (Did not have the equipment Monday.)  I need to wash clothes terribly bad, but have to go to the washers at the office.  That is one thing I miss.  That is all I miss, other than the deep red crape myrtle.  Brianna needs her clothes washed.  I still have many boxes to empty.  I remember lifting the tops of boxes and seeing stuff I need, but I cannot remember which room those boxes were in and I somehow do not have time to put things up, hang the wall hangings..  I have to have my crosses hung up.  I still put much stock and a little comfort in having them around me.  We are supposed to have a releasing of balloons at Billy's favorite place on Dorcheat Bayou this afternoon.  It is all planned, all but the buying of the balloons.  People are coming to it.  The two grown children planned this.  Why do I feel responsible?

One thing I wrote this for.  The one thing I could have just put two lines and it would have sufficed.  Nope, I have to bleed all over the place.  At my former house seeing animals and birds were everyday, all the time occurrences.  This morning I pulled back my living room curtains and on the railing of the porch was a cardinal.  I had to say "Happy Birthday Billy."  I saw it, I said it, but somehow it did not really reach my heart and mind.  It was just there and then it flew.  If I am him and he is me, why did he take my faith, my mystical-magical thinking and leave me with his unbelief in anything supernatural?  I want mine back.  He took it when he left, it was supposed to stay part of both of us.  

Oh, and Happy Birthday Gin.  Good people born in this July month.  

[Froggie4635]

Dearest Marg...

That cardinal WAS a message; a sign.  He was waiting for you.  It is hard sometimes to allow ourselves to "believe".  You have so much going on in your life, no time to LOOK for signs/messages.  So here was one sitting on your railing.  Smile.

[Margm]

7 hours ago, Froggie4635 said:

 So here was one sitting on your railing.  Smile.

I did smile, and I cried a little bit too Maryann.  Have not really done that in awhile.  Thank you.  Kelli called the woman in the office at the apartments and asked could she put a bird feeder up at my window.  I did not expect that.  The woman (Bonnie) said yes.  Surprised me.  

[Margm]

Two of my high school friends, three of Scott's and two of Kelli's came and we released a lot of balloons.  Kelli jumped off the big bridge with a bunch of young boys.  I kept telling her not to dive because she always belly flops and that would be disastrous.  She went feet first.  It was very hot, but not sad at all.  Lots of memories around that part of the bayou but was not unhappy.  All-in-all, a good birthday party for Billy the Kid.  

[brat#2]

I'm glad that Billy's party went well, Marg.

Joyce

 

[Margm]

Thanks Joyce.  We all need just a few moments of peace.  

[Patty65]

It is 5 months, right now, that you left this world.  Oh I miss you so much I can't stand it.  I need you, I'm trying to find you, I miss you.

[MartyT]

♥

[Margm]

I feel you Patty.  I look up at the clouds and just say "I don't know."  I think that fits everything in my life.  "I just don't know."  My heart is with you.

And, I have got to say  you both are beautiful together.  

[Widowedbysuicide]

Patty, that is a beautiful photo of a beautiful couple in love.  You must have some really great memories of your life together.  I hope those moments will sustain you if not now but in the near future.  Thank you for sharing a glimpse of your joyous times.

Marita.

[Gwenivere]

Beautiful picture, Patty.  I know they are hard to look at because I have some too.  It short circuits my brain wondering where he went and why.  It was all so simple before.  I look at our smiles and know ours will never be the same.  Only that  person could elicit that happiness in us.  I, too, hope that someday I will appreciate more than feel pain about it.  I see why you miss him.  You both look complete.

[scba]

I agree Gwen. Each of us were complete. It is so hard....

[KATPILOT]

Is it me or do your eyes look so much the same? I heard someone once say that eyes were the window to the soul. That picture screams happy and  love all in the same word. It needs a name all to itself. Perhaps Patty you are looking too hard to find him when he's been  right inside your heart all the time. Thank you for posting that picture. It brings to mind the love a couple can share through all of time.

[iPraiseHim]

That is a great picture.  A wonderful visual expression of love for each other.  Shalom

[kayc]

Patty,

That is a beautiful picture of the two of you, not only because you are a good looking couple, but because you can see the light in your eyes, the love between the two of you.  That's how it was with us, people could see our love and it wasn't uncommon for them to stare at us.  It's like there was the two of us...and then there was the rest of the world.

[Margm]

What I can tell you, from seven years on, is that grief does get different. Not better. Better is a ridiculous word implying recovery, or things fixed that can never be repaired. But different - yes. Somehow, grief and love and life all find ways to co-exist together, none canceling the others out. (Megan on the blog of hers "Refuge in Grief.)

I cannot look at the topic of her blog without reading "Refuge in Guilt."  I hear life going on all around me.  That is why I picked an apartment.  I think about our different grief, our different paths, what we are all going through.  I think about the age factor and (to me) it would seem horrible to be young and think life was over.  But, it is also horrible to be older and think life is over.  No, I do not want to live to be 95, like my mom, a bag of bones, already dead, but a brain that just won't let go.  

I cannot concentrate long on a novel.  I have all those People magazines, that were just a waste of money.  I thought I would have interest in articles, but I don't care to even look at them.  At night I read autobiographies, biographies.  Clark Gable now, with his marriage to Carol Lombard.  How he spent the rest of his life, after her death, trying to find another one just like her.  Supposedly, at the end, he had found it.  They had a child.  Clark had had a heart attack though and never saw the boy.  

I like to sleep, but invariably I will have to get up  during the night.  I used to think about RVing, about what Billy and I were going to do next, just things; then I would go back to sleep.  Now I wake up wondering about Mama, how we are going to pay for her funeral, how I'm going to find a washer open at this apartment complex (impossible), but we cannot have them in the apartments.  The double bills that are coming in August.  My granddaughter's future.  My daughter's temper.  My son maybe going without groceries, all worries about other people in my family and I cannot sleep.  

An acquaintance has a friend who was attending her dying father in the hospital when her husband at home died of a heart attack.  Both father and husband died within hours, minutes of each other.  She could only be at one place.  The death of the father was expected.  The husband's death a total surprise.

I know I need a therapist when the idea of even taking a shower seems futile.  You know, you still have to think of other people.

And caught the Sunday smell of someone frying chicken.
And Lord, it took me back to something that I'd lost
Somewhere, somehow along the way.  (Johnny and Kris/Sunday Morning Coming Down (again)

[brat#2]

Patty - I feel your pain and sending you hugs.

Joyce

 

[kayc]

1 hour ago, Marg M said:

all worries about other people in my family and I cannot sleep.

I, too, sometimes can't sleep because I can't turn my brain off.  Anxiety, worry, whatever you want to call it.  The more I fight it the longer it persists.  I've found it helps to do something distracting (come on line here, try to read, check the t.v.) or meditate if you can.  Even if your mind wanders, at least it gives it something to come back to and almost anything is better than lying awake at night, worrying about things you cannot change.  That's another thing I do, quote scripture, it's soothing.

[Margm]

20 minutes ago, kayc said:

meditate if you can.

Kay, sometimes I wake up like a newborn babe with no sense whatsoever.  Of course, when I was in Mount Ida I would go to sleep with the ear buds in my ears listening to meditation app's.  I have them already, just have not thought of them till you mentioned it.  You wonder what goes on in autistic children's minds, well, I think "grief brain" has to be just as maddening. Thanks, I will try them again.  

[Gwenivere]

10 hours ago, kayc said:

I, too, sometimes can't sleep because I can't turn my brain off.  Anxiety, worry, whatever you want to call it.  The more I fight it the longer it persists.  I've found it helps to do something distracting (come on line here, try to read, check the t.v.) or meditate if you can.  Even if your mind wanders, at least it gives it something to come back to and almost anything is better than lying awake at night, worrying about things you cannot change.  That's another thing I do, quote scripture, it's soothing.

I sure wish this worked for me, Kay.   Being predisposed to panic attacks, even not resisting doesn't help.  I can't concentrate on anything when those happen.  I regret not learning some good meditation techniques before I needed them.  I only know one that is very simple, but not always effective.  Trying to learn now is impossible.  It's a ride it out thing for me plus some meds.  The worst is the morning waking to anxiety and worry.  Those are the days I wish I had an OFF switch I could flick.  Sure colors the rest of the day.

[Margm]

Gwen, I cannot say I have learned anything from the meditation apps..  All I know is I listen to them for awhile and then I go to sleep.  I wake up sometime during the night and remove the ear buds.  I hope my sleeping mind absorbs something, but I could not even remember to do them again, so I doubt the use of subliminal messages.  I know they have not warded off the panic attacks.  I have cut myself down to one Xanax a day and use it at night.  I need one during the day at times too, but I have held off and really needed it.  If I take them often though, they do not seem to work as well.  Listening to the apps though somehow keeps my mind from running away to places it does not need to go.  I don't know how long I have been moved now.  Those things just don't register sometimes.  

[Gwenivere]

Marg, I have to take meds all day because my panic is a disorder I've lived with for almost 30 years now.  If I didn't have Xanax I would have checked out a long time ago.  It's impossible to live in that kind of fear day after day.  I haven't been taking enough for this 'in the face' reality phase that I will never see Steve again.  All I do is hurt myself by trying to tough it out.  There are no medals for not using the help you need.  Odd thing was I didn't need much as a caregiver for 5 years.  Now that I am alone, truly alone, no close friends and no family, fear of facing life without Steve is incomprehensible.  I guess I have thus need to feel I am so strong.  It's what people expect and coincidentally I was reading a grief book about the stigma of grief.  How we putt on a mask for the world, but when we get in the car to come home or people leave after a visit we take it off and sunk like a rock.  Alone in the grief once again.  For all those that have never had a full blown panic attack, it is much more than being anxious or nervous.  It's the most horrific fear one can feel with no obvious reason like a life or death situation.  Before. I was diagnosed I was sure I was going insane.  Grief is a huge trigger so they are back with a vengeance.  So it's Xanax all day long to function. Matt, I don't wait til I need the meds, I use them preventatively.