I’ve been slowly working through the grieving process with the death of my father and have come across a few interesting things I didn’t know about myself and others I didn’t realize were as prominent as I had originally thought.
- I actually have a max capacity! I didn’t learn this until recently I’ve known at times I’ve been close but never actually hit that point until a few months ago. My brain and body would just shut down, I would find myself minutes later staring into space and unable to move my limbs.
- There is a bit of time before and after a traumatic event that you actually forget, almost like the pain of childbirth and maybe for the same reasons, I will have conversations with people about things going on right around the time my father passed and I’ll have no recollection of what I did or how I did it.
- With that it seems that you go numb for a bit as well. We have a very close family friend that’s suffering through prostate cancer, I’ve spoken with him, his wife and our family about the matter and where other are very moved by the ordeal I find myself almost blasé about it. It’s not that I don’t care or that I feel the experience isn’t worthy of an emotion, at the moment though I can’t seem to dig down and find it.
- And you become a little selfish, I don’t know how many times recently I’ve looked at my husband and told him “I just can’t”. I probably could muster up the strength to do whatever it is that was asked but I don’t want to.
- I am impatient about the time it takes to grieve, I told my boss a few weeks ago that if someone could give me a timeframe and tell me things would stop hurting so much (not necessarily get better, just stop hurting) it would help. He smiled at me and went back to his typing, we both know each person is different but the unknown horizon really bothers me sometimes.
Most of this is coming to a head because a coworker that had been ill for sometime passed away yesterday. Last year when everything started I felt so horrible for his family and after numerous late night phone calls I would cry on my husbands shoulder, sharing the burden of their fear and pain. Today though I can’t seem to place my feelings, I’ve been sitting at my desk on autopilot running through a few emails and checking on some projects but….I don’t know. I wonder how long autopilot works before things start falling through the cracks, how long can someone be an observer in their own life? Is this really a good or bad thing? I’ve asked many people this question and can’t seem to get a straight answer, a lot say “Give it time” a few stare at you blankly because they have not experienced the same feelings and a small number have told me “get off your butt and do something, it’ll make you feel better” After time, blank stares and running my butt off I can tell you no one really has any better answer than where I started.
But last week I had a few days where I didn’t give my dad anything more than a passing thought and when I realized it I didn’t feel bad about it. I took a deep breath, felt around the wound and realized it hurt less – not better but definitely less. And maybe that’s what the real answer is. There isn’t a date on the calendar that will designate the end of grieving for me, and the loss of someone else won’t sting more or less than the initial shock but maybe after a time I’ll realize that I do feel small things and if I work a little at it, it will move itself into the large ones as well.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Teenage Driving
I have always been one of those parents/people that believe that teenagers should not have drivers licenses or be allowed to operate any sort of vehicle until they are truly afraid of what the consequences are should they do something stupid. Even now looking back I believe I shouldn’t have gotten my license when I did and I was not really capable of driving or fully grasping the concept of damage for a very long time after I had it. I was also one of those teenagers that didn’t necessarily get to drive around because I wanted to, I was only given the keys to the family car when an errand needed to be run and my parents didn’t want to do it themselves. “Here run to the store and grab me this” or “I need gas in the truck for tomorrow, will you get it for me?” for the first few weeks I thought it was the greatest thing in the world tolling around in that giant bronco, I’d pick the farthest grocery store or gas station away so I’d have a longer time behind the wheel. I would try and get the stereo as loud as I could and roll the windows down thinking everyone would know how cool I was in my big truck. What I realize now is I was one of the idiots that annoy the crap out of me now. I don’t want to listen to your music and while I’m sure you truly appreciate the bass that your stereo puts out, the trunk rattle you can hear just shows how much damage your doing and how much money you didn’t put into the sound system. You couldn’t have told that to me then though.
I bring this up because I’ve reached a crossroads in my life and am not sure which direction I should take. I have become tired of being taxi mom and trying to schedule pick ups with my two daughters along with running all of the errands I need to do especially in the winter months when I have to get them all done before the sun goes down (I have night blindness and just getting home from the office before I can’t see is a daily struggle) but I also know all of the stupid things I did as a kid with a very large vehicle at my disposal and I am terrified that my children will either kill themselves or someone else ( not that I have to worry too soon about this, the oldest is just about to be 14, but when she told me the other day she could get her permit in 18 months the reality set in very quickly). I’ve always felt very blessed to have 2 men in my life that knew cars and believed that you should know your vehicles limits, it allows you to drive them better. The problem is that in order to find out said limits you for the most part have to try to kill yourself to get there. Yes the truck really will roll if you turn a corner too sharply and yes you will blow the motor if you try to downshift from 5th to 2nd accidentally, it really does take a long time to stop a vehicle when you’re going 85 miles an hour and antilock brakes only work so long before they give up the fight of your stupidity. Also power steering is a godsend, I guess that’s not something I’ll need to worry about with my girls but I really wish someone had told me how hard it is to steer without it before I learned the hard way.
My boyfriend at the time and I were taking night classes at the local community college, I was still in high school and if I remember correctly I don’t think I even had my license at that point just a permit but as young people tend to be stupid I had convinced him to let me drive his 67 Impala around the parking lot to get practice. It was a boat, and aside from having no seatbelts, heater and blankets to cover the torn seats, it did not have power steering or power brakes. Everything was going fine to begin with and I circled the different parking lot for a few minutes before I got brave enough to take it out on a side street and go around the block. As I was making my way back to the parking lot a huge truck started coming the other direction, I remember being blinded by the headlights, slowing down to a crawl and turning into the cars parked along the street to give him room. I know now what I did wrong but at that point in time all I heard as I was trying to drive away was the ear piercing screech of metal on metal as I slid my car down the side of someone else’s. I desperately tried to correct my mistake but lacked the strength to move the behemoth at such a slow speed. After getting the car into the parking lot I ran back to the other vehicle – to this day all I can tell you is it was white, and the only reason I know that is because that was the streak of color running down the side of my car. I waited around for a bit hoping the person would come out they never did, I did leave a note on the car and pushed one through the crack of the window just in case the one on the hood blew away, and ran shamefully away. I never did get a phone call from the owner to help pay for the damage, and thankfully there wasn’t a person riding a bike or walking between cars. On the upside, the very next day a pump went into the car for power steering and power brakes on the boat and from later experience I can tell you that thing whipped doughnuts like a champ.
I bring this up because I’ve reached a crossroads in my life and am not sure which direction I should take. I have become tired of being taxi mom and trying to schedule pick ups with my two daughters along with running all of the errands I need to do especially in the winter months when I have to get them all done before the sun goes down (I have night blindness and just getting home from the office before I can’t see is a daily struggle) but I also know all of the stupid things I did as a kid with a very large vehicle at my disposal and I am terrified that my children will either kill themselves or someone else ( not that I have to worry too soon about this, the oldest is just about to be 14, but when she told me the other day she could get her permit in 18 months the reality set in very quickly). I’ve always felt very blessed to have 2 men in my life that knew cars and believed that you should know your vehicles limits, it allows you to drive them better. The problem is that in order to find out said limits you for the most part have to try to kill yourself to get there. Yes the truck really will roll if you turn a corner too sharply and yes you will blow the motor if you try to downshift from 5th to 2nd accidentally, it really does take a long time to stop a vehicle when you’re going 85 miles an hour and antilock brakes only work so long before they give up the fight of your stupidity. Also power steering is a godsend, I guess that’s not something I’ll need to worry about with my girls but I really wish someone had told me how hard it is to steer without it before I learned the hard way.
My boyfriend at the time and I were taking night classes at the local community college, I was still in high school and if I remember correctly I don’t think I even had my license at that point just a permit but as young people tend to be stupid I had convinced him to let me drive his 67 Impala around the parking lot to get practice. It was a boat, and aside from having no seatbelts, heater and blankets to cover the torn seats, it did not have power steering or power brakes. Everything was going fine to begin with and I circled the different parking lot for a few minutes before I got brave enough to take it out on a side street and go around the block. As I was making my way back to the parking lot a huge truck started coming the other direction, I remember being blinded by the headlights, slowing down to a crawl and turning into the cars parked along the street to give him room. I know now what I did wrong but at that point in time all I heard as I was trying to drive away was the ear piercing screech of metal on metal as I slid my car down the side of someone else’s. I desperately tried to correct my mistake but lacked the strength to move the behemoth at such a slow speed. After getting the car into the parking lot I ran back to the other vehicle – to this day all I can tell you is it was white, and the only reason I know that is because that was the streak of color running down the side of my car. I waited around for a bit hoping the person would come out they never did, I did leave a note on the car and pushed one through the crack of the window just in case the one on the hood blew away, and ran shamefully away. I never did get a phone call from the owner to help pay for the damage, and thankfully there wasn’t a person riding a bike or walking between cars. On the upside, the very next day a pump went into the car for power steering and power brakes on the boat and from later experience I can tell you that thing whipped doughnuts like a champ.