I am on an emotional mega-coaster.This isn't anything I can control and knowing that isn't real helpful right now. Too much is sometimes just that. Too much. My cat died the day after Thanksgiving and I became a grandmother for the first time less than a week later.
Thanksgiving was wonderful, then my father in Law had a stroke when he
got home. He is experiencing an amazing recovery which is fabulous, but
feels too weak to drive, (I applaud that choice) so cannot come up to meet the baby. My adult children are living their independent launched lives, as planned and prayed for, and I miss them with every fiber of my being. I miss my mother on so many levels. Mom is happier in "the home" but she
is not eating and becoming more and more "absent". I cannot get to see her often enough. The work projects I
spent so much energy on at the hospital are going without a hitch and
yet I am crying myself to sleep. I have been so unbearably sad for the last month, it is remarkable that I got up this morning. My life is incredibly full of amazing things. I have been working , constantly working actually, in an effort to hold back this dark familiar LONELY pit. I know intellectually that overwork, be it as a caregiver or as a chaplain or even as a the funny wife of my nerdy husband, has a price all its own. While being in the moment with patients in need, or students in turmoil, friends in crisis, removes me, if just for the moment, from my own heavy grief burden, it doesn't do anything to cure it. When I stop, I S T O P. Life pours in full force and I freeze.
OK Grimelda. I am finally listening.
I am going to the Caregivers support group now. I am going to hang onto every positive, every hopeful thing I can muster. I am going to find laughter hiding in the muck and I am going to go ahead and weep for Kitty, for my mother's self, for my pining dog and for the neglected life I leave in the wake of my business. And I am going to sing. I am going to sing of the miracles of a healthy granddaughter, a loving husband, amazing adult children, and the persistence of parents.
Amen Amen and Amen
