My moods seem to change on a dime.

Right now, the work day is nearly through and it’s my birthday.

Okay, technically it’s not until Monday. But it’s a big one.

So I believe it’s appropriate to begin the celebration now, and continue at least through Memorial weekend.

Just FYI, I am a big fan of cupcakes.

Way better than almond butter and bilberry jam sandwiches.

I ate a Ghirardelli dark choclate peppermint-filled square tonight that reminded me of that second night in hospice. The night I was grateful when my friend stayed, and glad when she left.

I mourned my father’s passing more deeply than my oldest brother’s. I’ve not yet let myself feel the depth of my grief for my oldest brother. I sneak tiny sips of it when no one’s looking. Not even me.

But my 52 year-old brother who died of acute myelogenous leukemia the same day he was diagnosed, three months after I’d put together an intervention in hopes of not losing him, too. An intervention that led him to treatment, hoping for life, after so much death. Five months after my father died, my remaining brother died. That death I’m feeling. That death has left me shattered. The pieces are too numerous, too tiny. I will never be the same. So why bother trying to put them back together? I’ll be this new me. Whoever she is.

But then again, I’m no different than anyone else. Death is happening all around us. We all have our patterns. Our timing. My family’s timing thus far happens to be April, October, March. Or three in eleven months. Or death, six months, death, five months, death. A death sandwich.

Some days I complete the tasks of my days as if everything is still the same. Some days I’m able to pretend it matters. Or ignore that it doesn’t.

But none of this seems to matter any more.

People piss me off. I have no patience. No tolerance. I don’t care. And I don’t care that I don’t care.

I know I need to work for a living, but I am perfectly content to do this from my bed. Why do I need to be in the office? Around the stupid people who think stupid things matter? Why must I exert my energy, the precious few resources that I have, interacting with all those people who have no fucking idea that I just don’t care about anything that matters to them?

I have all these questions. And I feel so inane having them. I’m not the first person to have been faced with muliple deaths in a short period. I’m not the first to then ponder weighty subjects and find no answers. The reason we’re here. How existence came to be. Whether it matters. If there’s another dimension. If we cease to exist physically, mentally, and energetically when our hearts stop beating.

We all ask the same questions and there are no fucking answers.

We’re born. We work. If we’re lucky, we love. And then we die. We get maternity leave for births. For deaths, we get a week if we’re lucky, and then we go back to work and are expected to hold it together as if nothing ever happened. When all we want to do is go home and work on our beds, pile them up with papers and cats, and just stay there. Occasionally eat an almond butter and jelly sandwich in our beds and leave the white plate smeared with bilberry jam on the floor. Next to the coffee carafe.

I want to stay in my bed and pile the floor with white plates smeared with bilberry jam.

Grief Sandwich

Funny how these acute myeloid leukemia cells look kind of like bilberries. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Old man, there’s no need to feel down.
I said, old man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, old man, cause you’re in a new town,
There’s no need to be unhappy.

But I’m eligible for A fracking ARP! I thought that was for old people.

My father died in October, six months after his oldest son. I had a little more time to prepare for his death. I spent five nights with him, just the two of us, in hospice. But even so, when my remaining brother died suddenly a month ago, on March 25, I was still trying to grieve the loss of my father. Only five months had passed. And I hadn’t even begun grieving the loss of my oldest brother last April. That death was complicated.

When I think about grieving, about letting go, I feel my heels planting more firmly into the dirt, my body leaning back against the rope I’m gripping. But it’s beginning to slip, sliding through my hands, in my own private tug of war.

I don’t want to let go. I don’t have time to feel the losses. To feel their impact. How can I let go of that rope?

Why am I not grieving? Why do I fear feeling it? Am I afraid it will take me through to “the other side”? To a place where I’m “done” with the loss? To a place where it doesn’t matter any more? To a place where they don’t matter any more? Back to my meaningless “before” life?

And so I lean back harder against the rope and hold on tight, even though my hands are torn and bloody.

I went from one death to the next to the next, with no time to grieve. My focus has been to push it away. Get back to work. Back to billing hours. Back to being productive. Back to fitting in at the mega-firm we merged with two years ago. Back to attempting to fit in at that firm even though I don’t share their ambitions and goals, let alone their pedigrees. I didn’t feel their level of ambition before the losses. I feel it even less, now. It all seems so trivial. Moving money from one deep pocket to another.

I need to let go of the rope. To be left alone to grieve. To let go of the rope and just fall apart. Why are we not given time in this culture to grieve? When did that stop? Why can’t I wear black for a year and have people leave me the fuck alone?

Since my brother died, I’ve had very few weekends to myself. Two were spent with family. Last weekend was spent out of town with my firm. And today I have to travel to a client event in a town about an hour and a half away. It’s a fundraiser for a good cause, and it’s being held by my favorite client. But I’m so tired. I just want to be alone. I want to write. Pet the cats. Sleep.

Nothing matters much right now. All the things people worry about at the office seem ridiculous. I want to slap them and tell them to stop fretting over stupid, tiny, small things. But nice things don’t seem to matter either. My jasmine is in full bloom. It smells lovely. And I don’t feel like sitting outside enjoying it and watching the birds. I want to be inside, in my bed, with a cat on my lap.

Last weekend, when I returned from Chicago, I got sick. Just a little cold. Maybe allergies. I wished I was sicker. Even so, I worked from home for a couple of days. In my bed. Papers strewn about, a cat in my lap (Sally), the drapes closed against the world. Just me, in my space, eliminating as many of the things that irritate me as possible. Next week, I may do the same. The boss will be traveling, so it won’t matter whether I work from home or not. He won’t need to walk down to my office every ten minutes to interrupt me with some idiotic, inconsequential tidbit. I like the man. But he’s annoying the crap out of me these days.

I know the irritation is part of the grieving process. But I want to drop the rope and move on to the harder pieces. I want to fall apart. I sometimes fantasize about being locked up in a loony bin for a month or two so I can just be alone and fall apart without all the meaningless bullshit distractions.

I’ve fallen apart exactly once since Steve died on March 25. Last weekend in my hotel room in Chicago. After the after-dinner drinks, of which I had too many, I crawled into the hotel bed. Maybe it was the unfamiliar surroundings. Maybe it was the lack of kitty sleeping companions. Maybe it was too much wine. But the next thing I knew, the dam broke. I sobbed into my pillow for over an hour. I was in such deep despair, I couldn’t prise myself off the bed for a tissue. But I was in a hotel, so I didn’t much care about the snot-covered pillow case. I just kept crying. Ugly crying. Body-wracking-sobs crying. I don’t recall ever crying so hard for so long. I was weak and hollowed out when it subsided.

That’s the kind of grief I want to feel. Over and over again. I know it’s there lurking, beneath the irritation. If only I could drop the rope again and fall flat on my ass in the mud. I don’t know how. I don’t know how I did it last weekend. It just happened. I think I just need to be alone. I need to stop with the tv-watching with my neighbor every night, which generally has included wine and a nice dinner. She’s my distraction. She’s been my distraction since the night I got the news Steve was dying. I haven’t spent a single night after work or on the weekend alone. Not one. Before Steve died, I was alone most nights. My neighbor was in Hong Kong and I spent my evenings in solitude. She is my defense against the grief. She’s supposed to leave this week, but is still waiting for word from her husband. I want her to go.

But I fear being alone with my grief. What if I fall into a pit of despair and am unable to climb out? What if the depression returns? I am depressed. Death does that to a person. But what if the regular non-situational depression returns? What if I can’t keep myself from being sucked under by the quicksand?

Depression is a part of grief. I know that. But what makes that depression different from clinical depression? Why is depression caused by death okay, but depression caused by life is not? How would I feel off the pharmaceuticals? Would I find grieving easier? Would I grieve too much? How can you grieve too much?

Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble grieving. Maybe I need to get off these meds.

Another rambling post. Forgive me.

The first award was given to a team of lawyers who’d succeeded in beating city hall and getting a methadone clinic built in a city that didn’t want it. The second involved getting a wrongful conviction overturned for a kid who had been living under political asylum after escaping a horribly violent African country at the age of three. While the bogus conviction was on appeal, ICE was getting ready to deport him, then 22, back to Sierra Leone. The legal team got the wrongful conviction overturned just in time, and he remains in this country, intent on becoming a Marine. This despite his being sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing $150, a crime he did not commit, and as a result, spending time in prison and an immigration detention facility. Yes, you heard that right: he doesn’t want to bomb a marathon now that he’s free. He wants to be a Marine.

They brought him to the banquet and he told us his story. Seeing the beaming smile on his face made the whole weekend. It made my whole weekend, anyway.

I’m smarter.
No, I’m smarter.
You’re both dumbasses compared to my brilliance.

I’m on a flight to Chicago. It’s an all weekend work rah-rah session. That means 48 hours with hundreds of lawyers. Lawyers drinking, bullshitting, and pontificating. Each one playing the power role, trying to impress. Needless to say, I’m not in the mood. But I missed the rah-rah session last year because my oldest brother’s memorial service was the same weekend. No way out of it this year. My damn plane was even on time. I plan to hide away as much as possible and spend some time in contemplation.

I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking lately. I’ve been in avoidance mode. I had a post recently on my “About” page expressing alarm at my coping mechanisms of choice: ice cream, wine, and mindless tv. I’ve watched the entire season of House of Cards, all three seasons of Downton Abbey, and now I’ve begun Homeland. I tried a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones. Complete and utter crap.

But I’ve strayed from my point. The poster was concerned about my wine drinking as a coping mechanism. She explained that addiction can be inherited, and that alcoholism is a progressive disease. My first thought was, “No shit.” My second was, “You must not be a regular reader of my blog.” Then I got angry. So what if  I’m sharing a bottle of wine with my neighbor nearly every night. Three people in my immediate family have died in the past eleven months. All the male members of my family are dead. I thought I saved the last one with the intervention. He was sober. Three months sober. And then he goes into the hospital, gets diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia, and dies within six days. Fifteen minutes before I get to the hospital. The last time I saw him, I held his hand on the way to rehab and sat with him as I helped him check in. You tell me how you cope with that. How in the fuck does anyone cope with that?

That reminds me of my eulogy when I started off saying how much this sucks and what a cruel and merciless place this universe can be. Afterward, the deacon told me it’s okay to express my anger. Anger is normal. I said, “I’m not afraid to express it. I’m pissed off.” He seemed taken aback. I suppose he’s used to a bit more reverence.

So back to my coping skills. Or lack thereof. Yes, I’m eating too much. Yes, I’m drinking too much. Yes, I should turn off the tv and meditate. But god damn it, this grief is an iceberg.  I know when I break down crying in the middle of the work day, in the shower, while I pet the kitty, when I look at his photos, when I tie my shoes; I know that’s an infinitesimal piece of what lies beneath. How in the fuck do you cope with that? There are years of this ahead. Years. Decades, even.

But the poster was right. Wine isn’t the answer. Or ice cream. Or mindless tv. I suppose I was trying to take it in little tiny slices at a time. I’m trying to control it, lest it control me. I know I need to let it go. Running helped me connect with it, but somehow feel like I wasn’t going to die from the overwhelming pain. It’s been a month (yesterday). I want to stop coping and start grieving. I did some research last week to find a grief support group. I’m on a wait list for one and got a reference for another that might be a fit in the meantime.

And after this stupid trip, I’ll keep lacing up my shoes and head out for a cry. And a run.

I forced myself into my running shoes yesterday for the first time since the day before my brother died. It was a beautiful spring day in Austin. I knew I should get outside. What I really wanted to do was sit inside with a gallon of ice cream and gain three more pounds. Okay, I don’t really want to gain three more pounds, but I’m not opposed to it enough to stop eating ice cream.

On a normal day, a day when three members of my family hadn’t died in quick succession, I wouldn’t have had much trouble motivating myself to get outside for a walk/run on a beautiful spring day. Or even a hot summer day. But for the past 26 days, normalcy has been far out of reach.

A friend asked if I’d be up for salsa dancing last night. Salsa dancing? The suggestion was so absurd, I laughed out loud. But I realized then that while I wasn’t up for dancing, I might be able to manage a walk.

I put on my running clothes, strapped on my Garmin, and made sure I’d selected a music playlist that wouldn’t have me crumble into a heap on the asphalt. As I went out my front door, I saw my stupid neighbor (the one who doesn’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink) pulling in. He keeps texting me about hugs. I don’t want one from him. Piss off. I stepped around the corner of my building and waited until the coast was clear.

I started walking down the sidewalk on the side of a busy street. Absolutely stunning day. Deep blue Texas sky, cool breeze, tree branches swaying, birds flying overhead. The beauty surrounding me was painful. I passed children playing. Dogs barking at their fun. My heart exploded with grief. I walked on, tears falling behind my sunglasses. After five minutes, I started to run. The air felt heavy like liquid cement. I kept going, running and crying, feeling like I was drowning in the cool spring air.

Everything in the world was too beautiful. In stark contrast with the pain buried deep in my heart. I couldn’t bear it. The images on tv this past week were easier to sit with. I felt an affinity with the grieving faces. I felt the communal heartbreak. I felt at one with humanity.

But the beauty of the day made me ache. After burying my grief for nearly a month under ice cream, wine, and television, the brilliant sunshine pierced my armor. The warmth of the sun highlighted the cold dark place inside me. The pain began to seep through the cracks and I was forced to look at it in the light of day.

I made it four miles. With every step, the ache in my chest lessened in the smallest of increments. My heartbreak didn’t ease, but I could breathe. I’m going out again today. But not with the goal of getting back to where I was a year ago. Everything is different now. My aim is to learn who I am.

Rather than piss and moan about my grief, and I happen to be deep, deep into the anger stage, I’ll update you on the one thing that feels worthy of my time these days.

Integrating the little diva that is Sophie into my household.

Sophie has been inside about a month now. She rarely ventures out of her safe room when I leave her door open. And even then it’s only to charge at Sadie, who’s gotten a little too close to Sophie’s territory, which she has no qualms about defending. Even against the formidable Sadie. Sally pretty much steers clear of the whole business, allowing Sadie to do  her dirty work.

It’s my own fault Sophie feels no compunction about staying safely ensconced in her room. She’s got her own litter box, lots of great places to sleep, a window with a lovely tree full of birds and squirrels, loads of toys, her own food and water bowls, tuna service each morning, and the piece de resistance, a magnificent new cat tree.

What cat wouldn’t kill a lizard for this?

If you look closely in the mirror, you can see her little black paws hanging off where she prefers to spend her time.

The Diva’s lounging spot of choice

That’s right: Sophie would rather spend her time lying atop a mattress leaning against the wall than on her spectacular cat tree. Not only that, she prefers the bare mattress to a sheepskin rug.

Weirdo

I have seen her lounging on her tree. Once. But I know she’s been on it when I’m not looking as the treats I’ve left have disappeared from each level. And today we made a little progress with out-of-room exploration. I lured her to the end of the hall to briefly play with a toy. But now she’s back on top of her mattress.

Annoyed cat–doesn’t like the flash

How pissed off do you think she’s going to be when I remove the mattress for the sofa bed that’s on order?

We are making progress with integration. The hissing has abated considerably. And all three girls are willing to scarf down chicken in unison on either side of the open door. I’ve also been successful at having Sadie and Sophie engage in simultaneous interactive play on either side of the open door, with the help of my neighbor.

All this leads me to the conclusion that I will have a fully integrated three-cat household in about two to three years.

I leave you with a few more photos of the little diva.

I’d decided then I’d had enough, I wasn’t going to lose Steve too, and I organized an intervention. While it was an “ambush,” it was a compassionate, loving intervention. And it worked. On December 28, 2012, he entered rehab and emerged fiercely committed to his sobriety. He did what he needed to do to stay sober: meetings every day, close contact with his sponsor, reading the big book, beginning to work the steps. And then he started getting sick. Sores in his mouth. Cellulitis in his legs. Pneumonia. My brother had oral cancer twice, and both times he got treatment (chemotherapy, radiation, removal of the lymph nodes) and it had gone into remission. We feared it had come back. It hadn’t. But he was back in the hospital in mid-March feeling tired and week. He went in on a Tuesday. The following Monday morning, March 25, he was diagnosed with AML. By 9:00 Monday evening he was dead. Three days before he would have received his 90-day chip.

My niece and nephew asked me to speak at their father’s service today. I’d never spoken at a funeral before. I fretted over it for two solid days. Jotting down memories. Writing stories from those memories. Discarding some and keeping others. Eventually I settled on several stories from our childhood, each of them with a humorous tone. Or so I hoped. I didn’t have a solid opening or closing, but I had some ideas rattling around in my head.

There were a lot of people at the church. I knew my brother was well-liked. He was a really nice guy. A sweet man, with a heart of gold. But still, I was surprised by the large turnout. And it ratcheted up my nerves a bit more. There were several readings done by the deacon, and then he did the eulogy. I thought his daughter was going to do it, but she lost her nerve. So it was up to me to bring Steve back to life, if only for a few moments in the chapel. It’s the least I could do for him. And his children. And his mother.

So when the time came, I took my notes and walked up to the lectern.

“This sucks, doesn’t it?” I began.

“All I’ve been able to think about these past 11 days is what a cruel merciless universe this can be. This sucks. But A and P have asked me to say a few words about their dad, and so I have to look beneath that, and find something more to say.”

This wasn’t in my notes. I’d set them on the lectern and forgotten about them.

I proceeded to tell the story of the moving-box forts, the false bridge-spotting, and the peeing on the car in Canada. I talked about him sneaking popcorn and pizza up to my room when I had to go to bed before everyone else because I was the youngest. I talked about him steering me away from dating his not-so-gentlemanly friends.

I made them laugh. Several times. Nice, hearty laughter filled the chapel. And I made them cry.

“Steve was my big brother. He was a good big brother. But we ran out of time. Still, he will always be my brother, and a father, and a son, and an uncle, and a friend. And I will miss him terribly.”

I made it through with my voice cracking only at the end.

Many, many people approached me after the service and told me how much they enjoyed what I’d said. I felt so proud.

I did it, Steve. I did it for you. I know you liked it. I know you’re proud of me. And you know how much I love you. We really brought down the house today, didn’t we?

Related articles

• Discourage (unconfirmedbachelorette.com)
• And then there were two. (unconfirmedbachelorette.com)
• Ramble On (unconfirmedbachelorette.com)
• A few words about my brother (unconfirmedbachelorette.com)
• Leukemia (garyskeete.wordpress.com)
• Risk of leukemia after cancer chemotherapy persists (eurekalert.org)