Friday, December 4, 2009

Farsi

I just met a man who offered to teach me Farsi. When he asked why I want to learn the language I said, "because my brother knew it".


What I didn't tell him is that I want to know how to speak in a language you knew, maybe say what you said. I'm still trying to figure out why you died and this won't do the trick, but it may help me feel closer to you.

Because now that you are gone I feel less and less 'close to you'.


It just doesn't feel like the holidays. I'm knitting a scarf for Dennis and I wish I could make one for you, too.

Doesn't feel like Christmas

The holidays are quickly approaching and it doesn't feel so much like Christmas. It makes me remember the holiday season two years ago when I was running around like a crazy person trying to be "merry and bright" while watching you die.


It is such a strange dichotomy: loving the holidays and feeling so sad because I miss you. I am knitting a scarf for Dennis and wishing I was knitting one for you, too.


It's not the same without you. That Jim-shaped hole in my heart won't ever go away.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Pissed Off Pain

“My heart never knew loneliness until you went away. I’m missing you.”


Adultsiblinggrief.com

On Uptown Girls Dakota Fanning said, “But now you are going to give me Mad Cow Disease and my brain will get eaten away!” Ohgod, it was like a punch to the gut. I felt sick, like I had to throw up. They were making a joke about what killed him and I certainly wasn’t laughing.



There was a commercial on TV recently for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The text read, “It’s like dying and going to heaven……without the pesky death part.”

Uh-huh.


I’m sure that when my brother died he thought, “this is just like eating a peanut butter cup!” fuckers.


Your levity about something so incredibly, excrutiatingly painful just pisses me off. You are a bunch of clueless fucks who sit around in offices making jokes about something that you are not mature enough to handle, so you mock those of us who have actually had to deal with it those of us who have had to face it head on, whether we wanted to or not, whether we were ready or not.


But, it is so goddamned important, isn’t it, that you sell another bottle of shampoo or that you convince more sheeple that some purse with someone’s name on it is important so you mock us, you ridicule our pain, our reality that we live in while you generate your counterfeit reality.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Not an Optimist

I'm watching Michael J. Fox's Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. I'm reminded that he is living with Parkinson Disease, that horrible affliction that we HOPED for for Jim. If he had it he would still be here.

Today is one of those days when I am
EVER
SO
BRUTALLY
reminded that a huge chunk of my heart is missing-forever gone.
One of those days when all of the details of his death come rushing back.

It's like this horrible nightmare that I occasionally get a reprieve from, then I wake up screaming into a life I

NEVER EVER WANTED

a life without him.

Surrounded by people, I feel incredibly alone.

I hear someone breathe and I remember the moment he took his last breath.

I look at someone's hand and I remember holding HIS hand as he died.

Everywhere I turn there are painful reminders of a life that included him and now our lives exclude him and that feels wrong

And I Am So Sorry!

Monday, February 9, 2009

Feels Like Loss

L accused me tonight of trying to sabotage her impending inauguration ball trip to Washington by sneezing and coughing all over her! Well, isn’t she just too smart for my own good?! The truth is that if I could knock her down and take her inauguration ticket I would do it in a heartbeat and I actually consider myself a nice person,…..but, I’m not. I would swipe her historic, ground-breaking ticket in a half a second, but that woman watches that ticket like a momma hawk.


I thought the other day about L going to the inauguration and had a sudden sense of impending doom. I suddenly felt like her mother, like she was in danger and I needed to stop her. I thought about how absurd this feeling was, I mean, L has lived in New York City and can likely take care of herself. Then I realized that here we are at January again and it feels like pain and loss and sadness. As happy as I am for her, as much as I wish I could be there WITH her, not instead of her,….it feels like loss even for this one person I met only a few months ago to leave, even just for a weekend. I don’t mean to make it sound like L is my security blanket, not at all. I just don’t want anyone to leave right now


This month


This day

This year


This moment

When the hurt still feels so fresh and raw and bloody. I can still smell the peppermint in his room, I can still feel his skin on mine when I held his hand and rubbed lotion on his arms. I can still hear the TV in the background and my wavering voice singing, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” to him just before he died. I can still see my tears forming a puddle on the pillow next to his left ear as I heard his heart beat for the last time. I can still feel his chest under my ear, hearing the sound of his beating heart fading into the distance.

I still see that moment, when I pulled the sheet back to look at his legs and I saw his mottled skin and gasped, “ohmygod!” when I came to that sudden halting realization that the last sign had been revealed, that last signal that told us that death was really taking him away.

Life here is okay, just okay without you. I still kinda’ wish that I had grabbed your once strong and mighty shoulders and held onto you as they wheeled you away so I could go, too. I never got to go where you went when I was little, I was always left out. I wish I would have gone with you into death. I miss you so much that it feels like a chunk of me is GONE and I am never going to get that back because it is YOU!