On death and dying
today i hung out sort of with mom and her friends. i meant to just stay and eat their brocoli but then i got sucked into the group and just kept stickng around. one of her friend’s dad is dying and they made her tell them about what happened today and she was talking about how close her dad is getting to death and how hard it is for her to deal with all of it.
i ended up crying (go figure, fucking emo kid) by the end of the whole discussion because its just such a weird subject for me. i don’t really remember my grandparents death. i remember going to the hospital a lot to see grandpa bob but i only remember the guy that gave me balloons, specifically the day mine blew away in the parking lot. and i remember going to see him when they had moved him back into the house when we took devon over to see them. that was so sad. he was so close to death. i also remember throwing a temper tantrum because they wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. but then they did let me go to the other grandparents funerals and that was good for me. i needed the closure, even if i was only four.
i have more memories of my dad’s parents being alive and of their death. but i really don’t ever remember them being sick. and maybe they weren’t sick for that long. i remember them as being such strong people though.. and i always had fun around them. i suppose thats the best memory to have.
i remember my mom’s mom the most of all of them. and despite the fact that she was apparently a plague on my mom’s childhood, they had a better relationship by the end of her life and so i remember her a lot. i think i always felt like she liked Tyler and Justin better than she liked me and i suppose she was just closer to them cuz they lived 3 blocks away instead of 3 cities away. i don’t know. but i remember her being nice even if she never was “grandmotherly” so to speak. she was near the end and i have at least some good memories with her. like that statue she gave me at first communion.
i remember when she died though. i had vbs that day and they told me right when i woke up and then they asked if i still wanted to go to vbs and i said yes. i just remember standing at the piano feelng like no one knew what was going on and that i couldn’t cry even though i really wanted to cry and i needed to cry (i was only like 8 for chrissakes) and i was just so sad. and we were doing a can food drive for starving children in other countries and we had filled the whole wall almost with cans so that they wouldn’t die and i felt like it wasn’t fair that people rally for other countries but not for my grandma. even though she did live a longer life than a child.. none of my grandparents lived to be older than 70.. i’m not sure any actually made it to 65 either. god that sucks. and my parents have bad genes apparently. oh and they smoke all the time so they’ll probably die young too. goddammit.
i might not hate my mom. i looked at her and realized i might be sad if she dies. but i kind of feel like she already did you know. like nothing could hurt worse than your mother telling you that she’s tired of being your parent. and it sucks even worse that i can’t talk about it. we’re just fucking not allowed to say ANYTHING about it around here or else we’re trying to use it to our advantage or something. i’m going to have another fucking nervous breakdown and i’m not ready for that. i don’t know how i’ll handle it when i finally deal with it all.
good thing i’ve been conditioned to push everything away.