Good Week, Better Week

So the holiday is creeping up.  I finally pulled myself together enough to get some shopping done.  I do feel I got suckered at one store.  I was so proud of myself for shopping around and not buying the first thing that met my criteria, but then I misread a sign and bought something that was almost double what I was expecting.  I think that's an old retailer trick, placing two nearly identical things right next to each other and duping people into buying the more expensive of the two.  I was buying bedsheets and the one on sale was 210 threadcount, but the one I bought was 300.  I stood in front of the sign for several minutes after my purchase to figure out why I'd just paid nearly double.  Of course the differentiating font was like 8 pt.  I'm probably going to end up returning it and getting my boyfriend a couple of massages instead.  That's what I'm sure he would appreciate more anyway.  Men aren't too picky about bedsheets.

It's been a wistful week.  I desperately miss my father.  I am reflecting much more often about the last week after Christmas 2009, so aware that all the trouble in the world followed that banking mistake.  I feel that my great meltdown is in front of me.  I have had some twinges.  I probably need a therapist.  I guess I am feeling survivor's guilt.  My dad eventually recovered enough, probably due to the medication, that we were able to discuss the situation with him. I think that is very healing for all of us, me especially, but I just agonize .... I just miss my dad. 

In any case, I am off of work from Dec. 23-Jan. 3rd.  My boyfriend goes to Costa Rica Jan. 5th for a weeklong vacay with guys from work.  I think the next two weeks will be a good time for mourning.

I have reopened a last.fm account and am getting an alt/indie/Britpop fix.  It is lovely.  Just what the doc ordered at 2 am.  I had forgotten about the healing power of music.  Listening to Franz Ferdinand's "This Fire."  This beats drinking by eons.

ID theft, the gift that keeps on giving

I received a wonderful piece of news this morning.  Someone in MI stole my credit card number and attempted two transactions with it in the same store, one of which was successful.  Not only did they steal my number and apparently my name, they had a physical card.  Wonderful!  So I've been skimmed and scammed.  Needless to say, it wasn't me, and I appreciated the call from the credit card company and the affinity affiliation.  I asked when it had happened, and it was THIS MORNING!

So it's good to know this company is on it!  And how.

As I'm in the process of paying down/paying off that card, I really wasn't tickled pink to know they'd charged a couple hundred bucks successfully.  But the company removed the carges and cancelled the card, so that was good.  I'm glad they got caught.  I'm hopeful that once the investigation is completed, that will be the end of it.  God willing.

Everybody's favorite

So yesterday I moved the picture board from the edge of the couch to the bookshelf.  I have not moved it back, so I guess that is some progress.

However, there are three emails I need to respond to, a call I need to remember to return before 10p every day, and some Christmas cards to send, and... I can't even complete the emails.  I start, and stop, start, and stop.  It's only email!  I was sitting at work, trying to send them, or really just compose them, and I felt my throat getting raw and I said, OK.  I will give it a rest.  The grief is manifesting and I just can't do it now.  We do what we can, when we can.  All three emails make mention of the death, and/or how we're doing, and I just can't respond.  It bugs me.

The short, shallow, easy answer is that we're all right, we're okay, we're getting by, we're getting along-ish.  I guess people are satisfied with this answer.  Sometimes I don't elaborate on it.  We are past the point of robotically going about our days, going to work, engaging in our routines, trying not to think about it.  At the same time, I know we need a bereavement group, I know we need a counselor, and uh... I haven't sought them out.  It's not the easy thing to do, seeing a counselor as siblings, to try to save or repair our relationship, but we probably should invest in each other since we're all we effectively have of our nuclear family anymore.  I am concerned that Dear Brother is going to pick up and leave me for the other side of the country.  I do not want to live in a state with no family.  So... my thought is to try to work on the relationship and make it less tense or just stiff before he decides he's going.

Even though he has annoyed the crap out of me this year, I wouldn't want to see him go.  Even though he is, to use childish terms, a real pest, he is my sibling.  I fear a great geographical distance will have a chilling effect on our relationship.  I value it even tho it vexes me and I'm currently not getting much out of it.  Blood from a turnip.

Fleeting Guilt

Today as I approached the tunnel, I had a fleeting feeling of guilt.  How could I have authorized that surgery?  How could I do that, make that decision for another human being?  I felt terrible.  I did not have the follow up thought that he may still be alive if I hadn't. 

I did not kill him by authorizing the surgery.  The kidneys failed post-op.  The dialysis failed him; his body was too weak to handle it.

I did the best I could with what I had.  The kidney failure greatly reduced his life expectancy.  I didn't pull the plug, nature did.

Last night I changed the wallpaper on my phone.  It had been a photo of us laughing together on the couch, when I was about 2, to a picture of the forest in Rhode Island last fall.  This morning I changed it back.  I like seeing his smiling face too much every day.

Baby steps.

Laggard

Now I get the obsession with the holidays and grieving.

I haven't done any decorating or any shopping.  It's not that I don't feel like it; I actually want to wrap the banister with Christmas lights tonight.  The idea of having people over to celebrate sounds good.  I guess I am waiting for the motivation to arrive.  Usually, during years when no one has died, the spirit arrives somewhere during the week of the 25th.  That's not going to work this year.

I feel the need to decorate the house for the housemate, even though he himself may not be all that interested either.  I feel I should take the reigns and tap into the domestic engineer that I know lurks somewhere deep inside me.  It's not even that I want someone else to do the dirty work.  I feel the inkling of industry!  I just... haven't felt it strongly enough to get moving.  Is it the grief?

 I feel the urge to put the posterboard of photographs... somewhere else.  Where would we put it?  I feel we should clean out his office.  Where will we put his degrees?  My better half suggested on the walls of the cubby downstairs.  Nobody will see them there; I'm not sure what I think.  Maybe if we ever clean out one of the bedrooms, we can put them on the walls in there.

I seem to be tiptoeing toward moving on, although that's also so laughable. Baby steps.

Purpose

It's December 2, 2010.  It is two days short of two months since my dad's funeral.  I am okay with the fourth of any month, but not the twenty-second.  The twenty-second makes me feel panicky and sad.

I am dealing okay, I guess.  I'm working, and so grateful to both have a job and a predictable schedule.  Life has shaken itself out to be somewhat tolerable.  The funeral was planned for a week-and-a-half after the death, time I took off of work that was enormously beneficial.  I crossed paths with an old friend who was so very kind to let me lean on him; now that he has kind of receded back into his own life, I ponder the concept of a healer.  They sure do come out of unexpected places sometimes.  God bless him.

In lieu of yet seeking a bereavement group, or a counselor, I'm going to try a reflective grief journal for a while.  We'll see how it goes.