Aug. 25th, 2015 11:17 am
Warning for Talk of Death
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justboltsOne year and 11 days after my last posting effort, I think suddenly of this journal.
To the right of me sits an old fashion book journal, one I made and bound myself in cotton fabric and cotton thread, with quad ruled paper for pages. I’ve been using it as a Bullet journal and have been updating it since April 1st of this year.
I’m currently on page 166… well, technically 168, as there are two wrongly-numbered pages in the mix. Flipping back through it, I encounter rapidly noted down daily events and feelings, designs for dresses, shirts, and hand-carved stamps, lists of the shopping and to-do variety, and several pages of budgets devoted to tracking every penny (Money management; the never ending struggle and learning experience). It’s endlessly satisfying to have created so much content, even if it’s content only relevant to me.
On the other hand, I’m currently 11 days behind on updating it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten so behind and I know I’ll readily be able to catch up, but I’m putting it off (further). It’s a big mental exercise to roll my brain back through the past and try to sort out eleven days’ worth of events and activities in the order they happened. Did I work on handsewing on Thursday afternoon, or was it Friday? I usually make bread on Saturday, but did I really spend all of Sunday reading fanfiction (yes)? Ugh. But it’ll be worth it when I do it and get it done.
For now though, I’m writing in this journal instead. Remembering how long it’s been since I last updated (or intended to update) sent me on a less detailed and minutiae-focused review of the past year.
It struck me all at once that the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 combined to form a really... intense year. Significant. Adventurous. Emotionally trying. Good. Sad. All of the above, I guess.
Standing out strongest on the sad side, were two deaths.
The first was the unexpected passing of my cockatiel, Yoshi, at the beginning of October 2014, after 13 years together.
The second, less unexpectedly, was the passing of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, at the beginning of March 2015.
There’s only one place I’ve talked about her death online, and that was in a locked post on an account only followed by twelve people. It’s strange to look back through my other internet social activity around that time and see not even a blip of it. But I remember, in that lack, the strong sense of how private it felt, how much I didn’t want to share it or hear responses from anyone not already familiar with the situation.
She’d been in her 80s and had had increasing mobility and health issues for the better part of a decade, but 2014 marked a very sharp decline. I’d gone over to spend Christmas with her and my grandfather, with the full understanding that… she just wasn’t going to be getting better. There may be future lulls, where she’d be ‘ok’, but she was never going to be ‘good’ again. Only worse.
It was difficult. Mimi couldn’t take care of herself anymore, hadn’t been able to for a while, and relied heavily on my exhausted grandfather and then, me. She was desperate not to go back into the hospital or into assisted living, and expected me to stay to take over her care. I couldn’t, not mentally, emotionally, or physically. I cried more than once during the visit and left with her pleading me to stay longer.
A couple months later, she was back in the hospital and a few days later, she was gone. My immediate feeling was relief. The downward spiral had stopped. My grandfather’s daily struggle to manage was over. My tired, stubborn, prideful Mimi, who so very much hated what her life had become, got to rest.
Since then, it hits me in odd moments that she’s gone, like when I nearly cried over a table centerpiece of a bunch of sand and shells in a glass container, but my dominant feeling is still relief. Guilt, too, both in general and over the relief. Facing the question of what I was going or supposed to do when she kept deteriorating and Granddaddy couldn’t handle her any more was terrifying, so too was facing the possibility of another visit as hard as the last one. I can’t pretend I’m not grateful that it’s no longer an issue, which itself is guilt inspiring.
I have good friends and a supportive spouse who remind me my feelings, my relief, are understandable and human.
I really didn’t expect to write all this or even entirely about this subject when I decide to make an update. But it’s the first time I’ve wanted to even talk about it publicly, so up it goes.
To the right of me sits an old fashion book journal, one I made and bound myself in cotton fabric and cotton thread, with quad ruled paper for pages. I’ve been using it as a Bullet journal and have been updating it since April 1st of this year.
I’m currently on page 166… well, technically 168, as there are two wrongly-numbered pages in the mix. Flipping back through it, I encounter rapidly noted down daily events and feelings, designs for dresses, shirts, and hand-carved stamps, lists of the shopping and to-do variety, and several pages of budgets devoted to tracking every penny (Money management; the never ending struggle and learning experience). It’s endlessly satisfying to have created so much content, even if it’s content only relevant to me.
On the other hand, I’m currently 11 days behind on updating it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten so behind and I know I’ll readily be able to catch up, but I’m putting it off (further). It’s a big mental exercise to roll my brain back through the past and try to sort out eleven days’ worth of events and activities in the order they happened. Did I work on handsewing on Thursday afternoon, or was it Friday? I usually make bread on Saturday, but did I really spend all of Sunday reading fanfiction (yes)? Ugh. But it’ll be worth it when I do it and get it done.
For now though, I’m writing in this journal instead. Remembering how long it’s been since I last updated (or intended to update) sent me on a less detailed and minutiae-focused review of the past year.
It struck me all at once that the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 combined to form a really... intense year. Significant. Adventurous. Emotionally trying. Good. Sad. All of the above, I guess.
Standing out strongest on the sad side, were two deaths.
The first was the unexpected passing of my cockatiel, Yoshi, at the beginning of October 2014, after 13 years together.
The second, less unexpectedly, was the passing of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, at the beginning of March 2015.
There’s only one place I’ve talked about her death online, and that was in a locked post on an account only followed by twelve people. It’s strange to look back through my other internet social activity around that time and see not even a blip of it. But I remember, in that lack, the strong sense of how private it felt, how much I didn’t want to share it or hear responses from anyone not already familiar with the situation.
She’d been in her 80s and had had increasing mobility and health issues for the better part of a decade, but 2014 marked a very sharp decline. I’d gone over to spend Christmas with her and my grandfather, with the full understanding that… she just wasn’t going to be getting better. There may be future lulls, where she’d be ‘ok’, but she was never going to be ‘good’ again. Only worse.
It was difficult. Mimi couldn’t take care of herself anymore, hadn’t been able to for a while, and relied heavily on my exhausted grandfather and then, me. She was desperate not to go back into the hospital or into assisted living, and expected me to stay to take over her care. I couldn’t, not mentally, emotionally, or physically. I cried more than once during the visit and left with her pleading me to stay longer.
A couple months later, she was back in the hospital and a few days later, she was gone. My immediate feeling was relief. The downward spiral had stopped. My grandfather’s daily struggle to manage was over. My tired, stubborn, prideful Mimi, who so very much hated what her life had become, got to rest.
Since then, it hits me in odd moments that she’s gone, like when I nearly cried over a table centerpiece of a bunch of sand and shells in a glass container, but my dominant feeling is still relief. Guilt, too, both in general and over the relief. Facing the question of what I was going or supposed to do when she kept deteriorating and Granddaddy couldn’t handle her any more was terrifying, so too was facing the possibility of another visit as hard as the last one. I can’t pretend I’m not grateful that it’s no longer an issue, which itself is guilt inspiring.
I have good friends and a supportive spouse who remind me my feelings, my relief, are understandable and human.
I really didn’t expect to write all this or even entirely about this subject when I decide to make an update. But it’s the first time I’ve wanted to even talk about it publicly, so up it goes.
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