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Still need to journal about Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Yesterday I was driving to the grocery store and enjoying holiday music - I usually try very hard to hold off on Christmas-anything until after Thanksgiving, but I turned on the xmas music radio station in my car and now it's all over. No decorations yet but I'm already wearing xmas socks and singing xmas songs and contemplating baking gingerbread cookies today. I am still wearing halloween leggings and prepping for another viewing of Nightmare before Christmas so I'm not done with spooky season quite yet! November is so gloriously spooky with these eerie chilled foggy mornings and fading leaves, moaning winds at night and all the deepening darkness, sunsets at 4:30pm. I love love love it.
Teacup opened! x-country skiing time is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
...
Today is set aside for baking for tomorrow's feasts/visits. Cynthia requested apple pie, Susan requested cookies, and I might bake more than that as gifts as well, we'll see how far I get. I want to prep veggies for roasting tomorrow, as well, that will make roasting them in the morning a lot easier.
...
So anyway, driving with Christmas music on, made me think about the holiday, and how much I like the lights and smells and sounds of it all, and then memories of my mom flooded in, and I immediately started to weep. This will be my first christmas without her in the world.
I've never had such an abrupt transition from an okay mood to tears. I've watched this happen to older people before but never felt it in myself. That was the first time for me. It I think has to do with the way our brains change as we age. That this is possible, when it didn't used to be. Emotions usually require some amount of time and build-up for me, before tears start to flow. Such a strange and awful feeling.
There is something so intensely nightmarish about losing a parent. It's the worst most unspeakable emotional torture. Brutal. It's so final. There's nothing to do about it to make it better. It's just horrible and reminds me that more horror is coming because everyone I love will one day die. It's the worst kind of pain. And it's inescapable. You just have to ignore it and pretend it's not there and press on anyway. It's really hard.
It wasn't quite like this, losing my father, maybe because I was so much younger, and because he wasn't a daily presence in my life, he was absent for so much of my life that his absence didn't feel like as much of a loss. I still miss him dearly.
I noticed this morning while making coffee in the kitchen that my brain can't totally accept that mom is gone, it has placed her as just sort of vaguely "away" but still alive and well and here for me if I need her. I guess I will just have to allow that half-fantasy for a bit. I don't know how else to cope.
Thanksgiving was never a happy time with mom, she always cracked under the pressure of hosting and there was always some dramatic crisis/blowup/screaming match, every single year without fail. My brother has decided unconsciously to fill the role of providing these dramatic flare-ups, now that mom is gone, so I am just kinda trying to avoid him. I'll see him tomorrow.
For us it's not really a holiday about being thankful for the genocide of the native Americans so that we can exploit and enjoy the bounty of this land. It's just about spending time together and being grateful for one another. I think that's okay. I think the source of this holiday is a sad one, and gluttony is not my favorite thing, big meals make me feel ill. But I'm so glad to get to see everyone. And not having mom's drama is more of a relief than anything, as much as I miss her.
I was thinking about her the other day, how she was such a different person the last few years of her life. She didn't know I was her daughter anymore, though she still loved me and seemed to understand some sort of connection to me. Somewhere around 2016 she started to get really agitated and confused at the word "mom" and I had to learn to just call her Molly and stop saying it. The stages of loss when someone is dying from dementia are really sad. It's hard to not have anyone to call "mom" anymore.
But, I learned to meet her where she was at, and to enjoy the new person she had become. And when I think back on my own life, I almost don't recognize myself. At 19 I was a total jerk, I would hate that person, it's impossible to imagine that person being me. She's not, I'm not her anymore, I'm totally different now. I feel like I've gotten to be so many different people throughout my life, and I get to be more people going forward, it's fun to think about. I wish we could just keep morphing into new and more wise people forever.
I miss the mom I knew as a kid. I miss the mom I knew as a teen. I miss the mom I knew in my 20s. I don't miss the mom I knew in my 30s, that mom disowned me and did a lot to make my life as painful as possible. But mom post-dementia onset in 2011 became a nice lady again. I cherish that person, too. And I miss her. I'm looking forward to having a memorial celebration for her in the spring, next year. Maybe on her birthday in June. We'll see. She would have been 80 next year.
Dad too.
sigh.
I'm so lucky and so grateful to have had an incredibly loving father, and mom who tried her best and taught me so much. they meant well. that's what matters most, in the end.
Yesterday I was driving to the grocery store and enjoying holiday music - I usually try very hard to hold off on Christmas-anything until after Thanksgiving, but I turned on the xmas music radio station in my car and now it's all over. No decorations yet but I'm already wearing xmas socks and singing xmas songs and contemplating baking gingerbread cookies today. I am still wearing halloween leggings and prepping for another viewing of Nightmare before Christmas so I'm not done with spooky season quite yet! November is so gloriously spooky with these eerie chilled foggy mornings and fading leaves, moaning winds at night and all the deepening darkness, sunsets at 4:30pm. I love love love it.
Teacup opened! x-country skiing time is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
...
Today is set aside for baking for tomorrow's feasts/visits. Cynthia requested apple pie, Susan requested cookies, and I might bake more than that as gifts as well, we'll see how far I get. I want to prep veggies for roasting tomorrow, as well, that will make roasting them in the morning a lot easier.
...
So anyway, driving with Christmas music on, made me think about the holiday, and how much I like the lights and smells and sounds of it all, and then memories of my mom flooded in, and I immediately started to weep. This will be my first christmas without her in the world.
I've never had such an abrupt transition from an okay mood to tears. I've watched this happen to older people before but never felt it in myself. That was the first time for me. It I think has to do with the way our brains change as we age. That this is possible, when it didn't used to be. Emotions usually require some amount of time and build-up for me, before tears start to flow. Such a strange and awful feeling.
There is something so intensely nightmarish about losing a parent. It's the worst most unspeakable emotional torture. Brutal. It's so final. There's nothing to do about it to make it better. It's just horrible and reminds me that more horror is coming because everyone I love will one day die. It's the worst kind of pain. And it's inescapable. You just have to ignore it and pretend it's not there and press on anyway. It's really hard.
It wasn't quite like this, losing my father, maybe because I was so much younger, and because he wasn't a daily presence in my life, he was absent for so much of my life that his absence didn't feel like as much of a loss. I still miss him dearly.
I noticed this morning while making coffee in the kitchen that my brain can't totally accept that mom is gone, it has placed her as just sort of vaguely "away" but still alive and well and here for me if I need her. I guess I will just have to allow that half-fantasy for a bit. I don't know how else to cope.
Thanksgiving was never a happy time with mom, she always cracked under the pressure of hosting and there was always some dramatic crisis/blowup/screaming match, every single year without fail. My brother has decided unconsciously to fill the role of providing these dramatic flare-ups, now that mom is gone, so I am just kinda trying to avoid him. I'll see him tomorrow.
For us it's not really a holiday about being thankful for the genocide of the native Americans so that we can exploit and enjoy the bounty of this land. It's just about spending time together and being grateful for one another. I think that's okay. I think the source of this holiday is a sad one, and gluttony is not my favorite thing, big meals make me feel ill. But I'm so glad to get to see everyone. And not having mom's drama is more of a relief than anything, as much as I miss her.
I was thinking about her the other day, how she was such a different person the last few years of her life. She didn't know I was her daughter anymore, though she still loved me and seemed to understand some sort of connection to me. Somewhere around 2016 she started to get really agitated and confused at the word "mom" and I had to learn to just call her Molly and stop saying it. The stages of loss when someone is dying from dementia are really sad. It's hard to not have anyone to call "mom" anymore.
But, I learned to meet her where she was at, and to enjoy the new person she had become. And when I think back on my own life, I almost don't recognize myself. At 19 I was a total jerk, I would hate that person, it's impossible to imagine that person being me. She's not, I'm not her anymore, I'm totally different now. I feel like I've gotten to be so many different people throughout my life, and I get to be more people going forward, it's fun to think about. I wish we could just keep morphing into new and more wise people forever.
I miss the mom I knew as a kid. I miss the mom I knew as a teen. I miss the mom I knew in my 20s. I don't miss the mom I knew in my 30s, that mom disowned me and did a lot to make my life as painful as possible. But mom post-dementia onset in 2011 became a nice lady again. I cherish that person, too. And I miss her. I'm looking forward to having a memorial celebration for her in the spring, next year. Maybe on her birthday in June. We'll see. She would have been 80 next year.
Dad too.
sigh.
I'm so lucky and so grateful to have had an incredibly loving father, and mom who tried her best and taught me so much. they meant well. that's what matters most, in the end.
