This isn't going to be a terribly happy post. I feel I should warn you of that now, before we go any further, because the things I have been going through lately--that my family has been going through--have been very, very difficult, and it's hard to keep a positive outlook on life when everything starts to feel like some kind of horrible, horrible fiction.
My grandfather died last Thursday of complications from Alzheimer's Disease. He was 81 years old.
I saw him one last time, toward the very end. On Saturday 11 June, I went with my parents and grandmother to visit him at the nursing home. He was in the end stages of the disease at that point, not even opening his eyes and barely waking up enough to eat dinner. I couldn't handle it, seeing him like that, only technically alive when everything that had made him my Opa had disappeared such a long time ago. It seemed cruel of the doctors to force him to wake up to eat, to keep him alive when he was clearly suffering and so close to the end. He was really brilliant once, you know--a professor of Botany--and loved gardening, and JS Bach's organ music, and spending time with his grandchildren. To see him broken down and empty and waiting to die was the worst thing.
On Tuesday night Oma called to tell my mother that Opa had an infection, and that it would be the end soon. I had to fly back to Seattle the next day, and I didn't want to leave, and face having to deal with his death on my own. I cried in the car on the way to the airport, and on the airplane, in another airport, on another airplane, and all night in my apartment. Dad called me early the morning after I got back to Seattle to tell me that Opa had died. I cried all that day, too.
Mourning frustrates me. It is my tendency to try to rationalize everything, to make it fit logic, and when someone has died, that doesn't work. It doesn't matter how many times I tell myself that he had been, for all intents and purposes, gone for at least a year before his body finally let go, or that I can understand the stages of and neurological changes that come with Alzheimer's. I know the Kübler-Ross Model of grief, and that I tend to deal with loss on my own, but there is no logic to this process. I cried for about two days straight and then I was exhausted and numb--I told my mother, "I think I'm cried out. There's nothing left." But then I slept for a couple of days, had a bout of insomnia last night, and now I've started crying again, so apparently I was wrong. My sleep schedule is all thrown off--this seems to be another symptom of grief this time around. I stay up late because I can't bring myself to go to bed, knowing that, more likely than not, I'll just lie there staring at the ceiling and remembering.
I'm trying to keep my hands busy, which is the best I can do. I cut out the pattern pieces and interfacing for a new purse, with fabric that reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh--sunflowers, you know. I have two more to cut out, although I'll probably wait on the second of those, since I'm not content with the lining fabric. I did start a new knitting project, a pair of Doctor Who/Amelia Pond-inspired fingerless mittens whose pattern is entitled "Does it ever bother you that your life doesn't make any sense?" Yes, Doctor. Yes, it does. I was through with one repetition of the "TARDIS lace" chart when I realized that I had misread the (arguably somewhat confusingly-written) pattern, and so had to frog the entire thing and start again. In the past 24 hours, I have actually made negative progress on this project. The upside: I have insomnia, and will probably make up that last time quickly--the lace pattern is easy enough, and I made at least one mistake the first time round, anyway.
The worst part of mourning is this: the people. I love my friends, really, but it's going to be a while before I can get up the energy to go out and have fun again. Honestly, I'm pleased that during the worst of this, two of my closest friends are across the country and another is working full-time. When I grieve, I don't want to be smothered with affection, or distracted, or have someone offer to help me "drown my sorrows." I just want to sleep, and work, and remember. I don't want to feel pushed into some sort of "recovery," as if grief is some kind of disease that must be cured. Right now, I can't handle stressful situations, I can't handle questions or peer-pressure, or expectations that I should be feeling more positive about this situation or getting over it more quickly. Let me be. Please. I don't know how long it will take before I feel "normal" again, but I need to allow myself time to grieve.
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