Atalist's Dungeon

 Goodbyes feel strange.  They are foreign to many because there is always a hope that you will see the person again, so you trick yourself into thinking that goodbye isn't really goodbye, but see you later.  I am in a situation where I am preparing to say goodbye to someone I love... purely love. As much as I may have hated times with my mom (teenage years were not kind to either of us) she is still the person who came to get me in an emergency until replaced with my husband. I think back to the moment I gave birth to our amazing little Sterling and how she wanted to be in the room and I kicked her out. To be fair they were checking my cervix and I really didn't think that was a spectator sport, but still, my mother snuck back in to meet little sterling as he made his entrance into the world.  My mom at her core was willful, strong, and resilient. All of those fundamental pieces of her are being stripped away. I looked at her tonight, really looked at her as she stru...

 I spoke to my doctor today. I needed to for my own clarity of how to get through all of this. I have random bouts of anxiety that seem almost crippling. What is going on with work? What is going on at home? Are my kids doing okay? It all compounds. I miss my children, my life, and my husband TERRIBLY. Nothing is normal and yet there are small routines or checkboxes to move through that get us through the day.  I spoke to Doug today 3 times and it felt like it was never enough. I wanted more. I video called the kids and my heart just ached because I wanted to be snuggling them on the couch, listening to Sterling crack a joke, or to have Grayson's tiny hand in mine telling me how much he missed and that he loves me. It all feels unbearable right now. I spoke to Doug about coming home for a bit and he assured me I could do whatever I want. But the truth of the matter is that I want to be in two places at once. My doctor (who is retiring at the end of this month) told me that I c...

 "No live organism can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." that opening passage from a show I can watch on repeat, resonates with me right now. I have returned to my parents' homestead and am rationalizing that soon it will be Dad's house. Ownership is for the living. The aggressive amounts of reality we live under are almost deafening and yet, here we are, existing because we have no other choice. Rationalizing between the mother and wife we knew compared to where we are now. The two are supposed to be one and the same, but the memories collide and fight each other for dominance. The woman I know as mom had long flowing red hair, gold eyes, and a penchant to give you a look that said "fuck around and find out" in one instance and in another "laugh and make jokes". This mom is frail and bedbound, smiles and talks on occasion... but her voice and her fire seem to have been misplaced or dimmed. Like the show, the prevalent...

 I came home today.  I spent time with my children and instead of saying no to the things they wanted to do, I said yes. I played outside for a while, we went for a walk and we played baseball, a favourite past time of my youth, and all the while there was creeping anxiety that followed me around all day. I said see you later to my mom today, but the harsh reality is that I could have just said bye to her for the last time. I am home and I hope that she hangs on, but there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to dying. I want her to obviously, but it is more of a wish for her to hang on until I get back. I also realize that it is a selfish one.  I talked to her about some of my favourite memories while I was there and told her why I loved my birthday and that she was a huge part of that. She always made it special. We had parties with homemade cakes, crafts, and different events... usually surrounding the weather because March babies have to deal with the unpredictabi...

 When you are young, you use your fingers as a method of measurement. "I am this big" as I hold my arms out wide, or I am this many years old. As you grow and get older those things to change, your unit of measurement changes to more practical methods. I am 5"5, I am this many pounds, I have this amount of money. It is easily quantified, and yet our first method of measurement is always there. Always present and it is funny when you revert back to using it. My mother is dying, I feel like at this point it goes without saying if you have been reading this far, but my measurement of that passage of time is the only thing I have left. I lift her because I am the only one besides my husband who has no trouble doing it and it takes two hands and my two legs to lift her safely. I did calisthenics with her and it took my hand, from my index finger to my thumb to wrap around her calf to lift her. Think about that for a second, my index finger and thumb touched as I grabbed the m...

 There is a certain level of symmetry that comes with dying. The subtle reversion to a child-like state is unsettling. Things I have bought for my kids that I thought they had grown out of are now being used in end-of-life care. Things like bed rails, baby monitors, etc. Her looking up at the trapeze grab bar is almost like she is an infant looking at mobile. There is a simplicity to how we go, but she is still here, somewhere in there she exists, her sass, her smiles, and her strength. It is an odd combo of frailty and autonomy that i am not sure I fully comprehend. Things are tough, things are simple, and yet things are where they are, minute by minute, second by second.  It warms my heart to see how my mother lights up around my husband and it reminds me of a time not too long ago when it was our little Sterling who lit up like that. Same smile, same eyes. I know what I passed on to my kids and I know where I got it. It is an odd thing to see the same face at the beginning ...

 So here it is, 1:30 am, a time that I should not be seeing more and more, but I am. Why?  because I am contemplating life, existence, and of course mortality. I am trying to work through things and I can't seem to get past the depression, the agony of it all, and the reality of the situation. I know my father is living day in and out with all of the checklists in place. He gets one thing done and checks the box. Last Thursday was utter chaos... Seizures will do that. They will ruin a perfectly good plan in an instant. My father after her seizure told me that he was fairly confident she wasn't going to wake or be in there when she did. He thought he had lost her, and when he didn't, he went back to the status quo of the checklist. There is safety in a list. There is a structure to lists, conventions, and routines and yet I have lost all of them. I cannot focus. It is like fog settles over me and I cannot concentrate. The conventions of the day seem lost to me. When to eat, ...

 I am trying to be okay, a sort of fake it until you make it sort of deal. But in the end, I know there is no going back to being okay for a while. I am being changed by this process. My mom is dying. I sit here in limbo thinking of all of the things I would like to be doing and lament that I cannot do them. I want to be enjoying March break with the kids, at home, going "bogganning" but I can't. I want to be snuggling my tiny muggles but I am away. I want to get back to doing things for work, but I don't know when I can do that. It all seems so tricky and so confusing. My mother had a seizure... a big one last Thursday. That was the first day I was home in a while, saw and cuddled the kids, had a nap and then got a phone call that I had to leave to get back to Bancroft. I have been here since and I am feeling trapped by the unknown. I know that my mother is dying, I have known this for weeks. The steady decline of her condition and now the inability to go anywhere to...

 I miss you.  It is hard being in limbo and being stuck in a place that you aren't sure of when you can leave... I know that I want to be there for kids and my husband, however, recent events have changed all of that. I was supposed to be home for a time and that has been thrown out entirely. I miss my babies and they don't exactly understand but I think on some level they do. My family hasn't dealt well with the slow burn of losing someone and we are trying to deal with it now... it just seems impossible.  Things I want to tell my children,  1. you are everything to me and if I could come home I would  2. you are so brilliant and incredible.  3. mommy wants to hug and kiss you lots when I get to see you next...  4. This too shall pass.  although this time feels like it is dragging on, it will be a blip on the radar for the time I will get with you later. I love you, my babies.  <3  Mom

 There is nothing harder than feeling like you are stuck.  I talked to my husband last night about it. We talk multiple times a day, but last night I just kept saying to him that I feel like I am in stasis. I feel like I am waiting around for my mother to die, but at the same time, I am trying to enjoy the small things. Cuddling with my mama, her smiling at me, her asking me about the boys, and really just spending the time. But the anxiety of being in stasis is almost as crippling. I am struggling with the inability to focus on anything else but my mom. Today I had a list of 6 things I wanted to accomplish. I got 2 of them done in between shoveling, laundry, and caring for mom. It is frustrating because I feel like I should be able to do more. That I should be able to make things happen. I have had an unyielding amount of stress for almost a year now and I have been able to complete so many things ... but now I am just stuck. weighed down by how I am feeling.  I want to ...

 I feel like there is a lot of doom and gloom on my blog recently. I obviously have my reasons for believing this but at the same time, there are little glimmers of love and happiness. The man next to me is one of those exceptions. Last week when I told him what was going on with mom between sobs, he told me to leave work and go home. He was concerned for me. We then made a plan quite quickly with the help of family and friends to get home to my parents where we were needed and there was no question from him. I told him what I needed and he made it happen, but it was more than that. He was happy to make it happen. He was incredible. He took my father out on Friday when all the heavy stuff seemed to come down and he gave him a good day. My father was aghast when he saw how much we spent on his favourite steak dinner, but Doug replied with he was worth every penny. He cooked, he cleaned and he spent time with my parents. He also did a lot of the lifting for mom but did it with a smil...

 I have never been so keenly aware of the passage of time.  Having a family member dying will do that to you, but at the same time, I feel like I have failed at my monitoring and time management skills. I should be watching things more closely, as I scramble at what feels like the eleventh hour to get things ready to celebrate my son's birthday. It is a momentous occasion, sure, but I don't feel like I have it in me to celebrate. It is hard to celebrate when you are grieving. Grieving takes up a lot of space and doesn't leave room for much else. I am grieving yes, but I feel like that in itself is premature as she is still here. Still able to talk to me on the phone... for the most part, and still able to be a part of things. We know we are losing her and soon and all of it seems to just suck the air out of the room.  I feel like I am lacking the ability to deal with a lot of things at the moment because I am so keenly aware of what is happening. I cuddle with mom on her ...

 I have been thinking about this a lot lately,  How do you work your way through parenting with Grief? I have always been open and honest about my feelings and I can't seem to speak when the children are in the room. The waves roll over me and I lose my voice all of a sudden. I seem able to feel what I am going through but not explain why I am sad or angry. They know I am feeling things and yet when it comes to the children I lose all capacity to explain it to them. I have been taking time to try to explain it, but I am so worried about the damage I am going to inflict on the children when they are already so fragile. I am worried about my daughter who is taking all of this so hard. There are no more questions other than this. How do you parent through grief? How do you make it through? 

 When you are little you learn everything in rapid succession. Though they call it baby steps, it is quick, it is deliberate. There are stumbling blocks, there are failures but all through the process of learning. But what happens on the other side of life. When your life is ending and you stumble. It seems an odd choice to call it baby steps, or rather to take baby steps when you are no longer infantile. But do we call it that because we return to an infantile state? Where the care and consideration for a declining person are more akin to a baby. In that respect do we return to a state of love that is felt when we hold a baby when we are about to lose someone? It feels like there are so many questions that get left unanswered with a simple turn of phrase. But in that phrase, I see the frailty and the delicateness of the situation. My mother is taking baby steps away. She is baby steps towards the end and all I can do is watch like a new parent. In awe and utter sadness that she is...