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Apr. 15th, 2009 02:58 amThis evening I made a big old wok of stir fry vegetables (terriyaki), a big pot of chickpea noodle soup, and a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and some of my strawberry filling. All from scratch, all good. And a lot of 10 minute boil in bag brown rice to go with the stir fry.
Every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep last night, I saw my Grandpa's dead body in the funeral home. I cried a lot in the funeral home. I'm still not completely sure why; it was some combination of having known him in life and seeing his dead body, being near a dead body in general, and the overwhelming pain and grief my mother was feeling. Basically I was standing in an emotional tidal wave and there was no way not to get sucked under.
This is the third time I've been near a dead person. It always unsettles me terribly.
It's just so fucking intensely obvious that it is not the person anymore. SO MUCH of how a face looks, is the personality that animates it - even in sleep, even in a coma. I really don't understand how anyone could see a dead body and not know that souls exist. What was there...is gone. What is left...is something else. Vacant, and decomposing.
So those first few hours in bed, I had all these cyclical, exponential thoughts. Round and round, wider and wider...
That is going to happen to me one day - all this flesh on me will be just a carcass.
It's going to happen to everyone I know or ever see.
Everything is so temporary, so changeable, we are all gradually falling apart physically.
Sometimes, people go into the hospital and don't come back out.
Sometimes, there is something going wrong inside your body and you have no idea until it's too late.
It's going to be our parents, before we know it - mine and Laura's, Grant's and Frank's.
Not just that Grandpa died, but my Mom and Dad and Teresa have all been in the hospital for serious things now, in these past years.
My Nana!
When I was in the ICU, I had such a thick and solid wall up, blocking out my emotions, that nothing I perceived can be trusted. But it seemed, it really seemed as though everything was trying to fade to black, as though that's all there would be, if I let go - just black.
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Hell?
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Heaven?
I was so afraid of my parents going to hell as a 6 year old in Baptist school.
Everything is so temporary, my mother refusing to come to church where I was getting baptised, my mother getting baptised in a church, my mother in the My Dad years, the Jud years, the (golden) Todd years. My mother now thin and fragile and different, no boundaries, but looking like her old self for just an hour before she left.
Except skinny like she was 17 and in my baby pictures.
I say these things, these wild hyperbole over the top things to joke like I'm so old, but they're ACTUALLY TRUE:
-The bridge I drove over all the time in my remembered childhood is rusted railings falling into the sea and 9 foot trees coming up through the asphalt
-my baby videos are silent flickering things converted from old reels
What will my Dad have left to live for, if his Dad dies? He drives a cab, he lives with Madie, and he takes care of his Dad. That is the important part.
My daughter will be 9 so soon.
My baby will be 2 so soon.
My brother was my 2 year old baby.
It was a long time getting to sleep full of intense dreams.
Grant is still sick. We have been talking a lot about all of this. And I ran a lot of errands with Ananda today - Publix, post office, CVS for a picture print, PetCo for hay and litter.
God feels so real to me. Not just real...always real. He seems so CLOSE. I keep praying and having the sense of turning to yell to someone and finding myself nose to nose with them, and being like...oh. And adjusting my volume. It's how I felt in Boston, and at camp. I spent an hour on the phone with my Dad today. And my mom called 3 times. I pray Mother Teresa's prayer; Speak with my mouth, touch with my hands. I don't know how to explain what I mean except that I FELT my prayers working, in the funeral parlor, I felt my mother's pain and I felt how she needed it and I felt it working. Not taking the pain away. Just the sharpest corners, the roughest edges, making it something she could wade through somehow. Holding her up. There are all these little things I start to want to do - to eat crap when I'm not hungry, to slack off when I shouldn't, to give in to little temptations of all kinds, but it's easy...easy to not do them. It's annoying how easy it is, because I want to be more tempted and do them and like them. But it's just so clear that I'm not supposed to, and don't need it. That it isn't what I'm really looking for. And then the words and tones are right there, to say these things to my mother and to my father that are so hard to say, so harsh to say, that need to be said, and then I'm in some state of curious surprise that I didn't offend anyone because I wasn't offensive.
I guess this is kind of cryptic. But it's amazing. I feel so calm, but calm in this very humble, very raw way that has to do with deep connection and faith in surreal times.
I do hope that I sleep better tonight.
Every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep last night, I saw my Grandpa's dead body in the funeral home. I cried a lot in the funeral home. I'm still not completely sure why; it was some combination of having known him in life and seeing his dead body, being near a dead body in general, and the overwhelming pain and grief my mother was feeling. Basically I was standing in an emotional tidal wave and there was no way not to get sucked under.
This is the third time I've been near a dead person. It always unsettles me terribly.
It's just so fucking intensely obvious that it is not the person anymore. SO MUCH of how a face looks, is the personality that animates it - even in sleep, even in a coma. I really don't understand how anyone could see a dead body and not know that souls exist. What was there...is gone. What is left...is something else. Vacant, and decomposing.
So those first few hours in bed, I had all these cyclical, exponential thoughts. Round and round, wider and wider...
That is going to happen to me one day - all this flesh on me will be just a carcass.
It's going to happen to everyone I know or ever see.
Everything is so temporary, so changeable, we are all gradually falling apart physically.
Sometimes, people go into the hospital and don't come back out.
Sometimes, there is something going wrong inside your body and you have no idea until it's too late.
It's going to be our parents, before we know it - mine and Laura's, Grant's and Frank's.
Not just that Grandpa died, but my Mom and Dad and Teresa have all been in the hospital for serious things now, in these past years.
My Nana!
When I was in the ICU, I had such a thick and solid wall up, blocking out my emotions, that nothing I perceived can be trusted. But it seemed, it really seemed as though everything was trying to fade to black, as though that's all there would be, if I let go - just black.
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Hell?
Could it really actually be possible that Grandpa is in Heaven?
I was so afraid of my parents going to hell as a 6 year old in Baptist school.
Everything is so temporary, my mother refusing to come to church where I was getting baptised, my mother getting baptised in a church, my mother in the My Dad years, the Jud years, the (golden) Todd years. My mother now thin and fragile and different, no boundaries, but looking like her old self for just an hour before she left.
Except skinny like she was 17 and in my baby pictures.
I say these things, these wild hyperbole over the top things to joke like I'm so old, but they're ACTUALLY TRUE:
-The bridge I drove over all the time in my remembered childhood is rusted railings falling into the sea and 9 foot trees coming up through the asphalt
-my baby videos are silent flickering things converted from old reels
What will my Dad have left to live for, if his Dad dies? He drives a cab, he lives with Madie, and he takes care of his Dad. That is the important part.
My daughter will be 9 so soon.
My baby will be 2 so soon.
My brother was my 2 year old baby.
It was a long time getting to sleep full of intense dreams.
Grant is still sick. We have been talking a lot about all of this. And I ran a lot of errands with Ananda today - Publix, post office, CVS for a picture print, PetCo for hay and litter.
God feels so real to me. Not just real...always real. He seems so CLOSE. I keep praying and having the sense of turning to yell to someone and finding myself nose to nose with them, and being like...oh. And adjusting my volume. It's how I felt in Boston, and at camp. I spent an hour on the phone with my Dad today. And my mom called 3 times. I pray Mother Teresa's prayer; Speak with my mouth, touch with my hands. I don't know how to explain what I mean except that I FELT my prayers working, in the funeral parlor, I felt my mother's pain and I felt how she needed it and I felt it working. Not taking the pain away. Just the sharpest corners, the roughest edges, making it something she could wade through somehow. Holding her up. There are all these little things I start to want to do - to eat crap when I'm not hungry, to slack off when I shouldn't, to give in to little temptations of all kinds, but it's easy...easy to not do them. It's annoying how easy it is, because I want to be more tempted and do them and like them. But it's just so clear that I'm not supposed to, and don't need it. That it isn't what I'm really looking for. And then the words and tones are right there, to say these things to my mother and to my father that are so hard to say, so harsh to say, that need to be said, and then I'm in some state of curious surprise that I didn't offend anyone because I wasn't offensive.
I guess this is kind of cryptic. But it's amazing. I feel so calm, but calm in this very humble, very raw way that has to do with deep connection and faith in surreal times.
I do hope that I sleep better tonight.
