My Progress or lack thereof

I feel like I am moving into a different "stage" or different something in my grief. I wish I could say it was a good thing but I don't really think it is. I am calling this my "full of resentment and melancholy" stage.

Maybe it is the one year marker that is rapidly approaching... I mean, tomorrow is 11 months. How did that happen? Where was I and how can I really have lived so many months without my mom to talk to or laugh with? As it gets closer to the anniversary, or maybe just farther from when it all started, I am just feeling quieter. I can't summon up the energy to write anything lately. I have thought about it numerous times, then I sit down and I am just blank. I have stayed busy this past year, I think now it was just to avoid thinking about it. On the quiet nights when I have nothing to do I can feel myself ready to break down. Sometimes I wish that life was like some kind of a video game and I could hit "quit" and go back to the life I had before this.

Anyway, more then the melancholy which is assume is fairly normal, I am full of resentment. It is a terrible feeling to have, it is terrible to think that you are suddenly incapable of sympathy to others. One of the girls who is contributing to the book wrote about feeling like this for awhile after her mom died, so I am holding tight onto that, hoping it is a temporary thing.

Last week I went to another wake and funeral. Seems to be a pattern this year, a pattern I hope will end soon. It is such a mix of bad feelings going to them. I feel so self-centered because I always re-visit my moms while I should be focusing on the person being laid to rest then and there. It is like having horrid flashbacks. As I went up to Chad's grandfather, I could smell the body, the smell of a dead body, just like my moms. I remember her in the casket... we brought perfume to try and cover it up but it didn't do much. It hadn't even bothered me too much at the time, probably the shock of it all, but it just crushed me to smell it again, and to remember. And the funeral procession. As I drove Chad this time, I kept remembering every detail of when he drove me. I remember being the first ones to leave the church and getting in the car to wait for the procession to begin. I held a wet kleenex crumpled in my fingers and kept rolling and un-rolling it. I didn't know where to look as everyone was passing by my window on the way to their cars. People looked in at me, some people put their hands on the glass, it was very surreal. I remember every little detail, and they all just hurt so badly. And it is just hard to be places and be in your head thinking about things you shouldn't be and not being able to say anything to anyone. And then beating yourself up for not thinking about the right things or feeling sorry for yourself. And for the jealousy... I know people were sad, no funeral is happy, but there were some feelings of relief (no more suffering, with his wife now, lived a good long life...) and because my experience was so crushing, felt so unfair, I actually was jealous at a funeral. It is a horrible thing and I could sit here and lie and say that I wasn't, but truth be told I was.

And its the little things lately (always I guess) that hurt. At the wake, my daughter accidentally peed on my dress. My mom would have found that hilarious. I would have called her and laughed about it. Instead, I thought about how I would have done that and got mad that I couldn't.

And on the topic of jealousy (seems to be a theme, yikes) I have been having such a hard time with my step sister lately. Well first of all, my step father re-did my moms house after she died. I was upset at first because now it is different, but I then realized that it was what he needed for a type of therapy, and the changes he made were all things my mom would have liked. But it is still hard when I go into her house and have to ask where things are... it makes me feel much more like an outsider or guest then family and comfortable. Anyway, back to my step sister. Mind you none of this is her fault, none of this is justifiable anger or hurt. Well, I remember a few months back I was going to Albany for the weekend for something and my step-father was going to be out of town. Perfect I thought. A night with the house. (I usually stay at my dads when I visit now, but with no one in the house I really wanted to be there). Well, I told my step-father I wanted to stay there and then that day he told me Brittany would also be there with her son and boyfriend. I know there is plenty of room... but it took that specialness away from me. Then, more recently, she moved in to the house. And she drives my moms car. Both of these are for financial reasons that my logical self can surely understand... but my emotional self is not quite there. And this past weekend I wanted to spend Friday night after the wake at my moms camp. It was close by to where we needed to be, and I had never stayed there. The last time I was there was the week after she died, and I didn't stay the night. Other then that, I have only been there once when she was alive, but she talked about it all the time, she absolutely loved it there. So I looked forward to a night there, as emotional as it might have been. Well, that morning on facebook my step sisters status said she was staying at her dads camp that night. My heart literally fell through the floor. I called my step father crying and asked if she could stay somewhere else that night, but all he could say was that he couldn't ask her not to stay there and we should all just stay there together. For one, it just wouldn't be the same for me, and for two, it is tiny. Needless to say, she stayed there, I did not. I was my moms only daughter, she was my best friend, and I feel like I have nothing left of her except distant memories.

I guess this was pretty down... its just how I have been feeling lately. Lyndsey, I hope you don't get mad about the funeral and wake stuff, its hard for me to explain, and I am sorry for your loss and I don't mean to diminish it by what I wrote, I just have my own personal horribleness going on in my head and I needed to write it out, try to sort it out...