Category: sad stories

Reader, I’m going to just keep my mouth shut, because the universe really seems to enjoy one-upping me lately. As soon as I said, “I would really like to not think about poop for a while,” Doc stopped pooping, developed symptoms of appendicitis, and ended up in the hospital for three days of IV antibiotics for diverticulitis.

Saturday his doctor was talking surgery (since there were micro perforations in his guts) but the antibiotics did their trick and he’s home now with intact intestines. He was a trooper for the whole thing and the nurses were all nice but we both just collapsed and slept like the dead when we got home yesterday.

(Not to be outdone, Toby’s insulin dose is still messing up his little guts so I would wake up to rush over to the hospital and discover more! poop! in creative places. [He gets to go to the vet tomorrow.])

I blogged years ago about “amor fati,” love of one’s fate, and I think my fate for the moment is poop and I’d better just embrace it.  Because look what Doc and I saw on a walk around the neighborhood last night:

 

 

Yesterday was a bad day: There was another earthquake Tuesday night, I was under the weather, it was Mom’s birthday, work asked us to take a 20% pay cut and I got my first reduced check, and a job offer I’d been planning on since January fell through. Plus, you know, the whole global pandemic/giant recession/political incompetence shitshow that happens daily. Truly, a Bad Day.

I told my friend all of this and she sent me the perfect image:

I might have to frame this one and keep it up for the duration.

Here’s a short, searing piece from Andy Kopsa about losing her father to pancreatic cancer. Why do I keep posting about grief when I have enough of it in my life? Because, as she points out in the essay, there is something to be said about hearing from someone who has also been through this. “I am finding my tribe — the ones of us who watched our parents dying.”

From “There Are No Five Stages of Grief“:

 

My research suggests there will be a period of adjustment as I try to find a new normal. So far my new normal has involved a variety of public and private acts of mourning. Some days my pain is like accidentally brushing fingertips across a hot iron, burning yet mercifully brief.

Other days I start crying over a bag of frozen shrimp at Trader Joe’s. Or like today, I stare out the back door at my wintry rooftop garden and think of summer tomatoes, the smell of dirt, of my father, and sob.

[…] As Americans, we have been trained up to believe that grief is a process, something linear we are capable of understanding. But I am comfortable with my broken heart now after my dad’s death, comfortable even when my sadness reaches a maddening crescendo because that is when I get the gift of giving up.

I’d been doing better this week and last–the sun was shining, Toby’s ear was better, there was activewear fabric to buy–but yesterday morning, brushing my teeth, I was just overcome with grief over Mom. The last weeks were so horrible for her (and my dad); I relived all of it.

I pulled myself together to go to work. “That’s ok,” I thought. “You can take that pain and channel it at the gym and hit a new bench press weight.” But I couldn’t. I could barely make my old max and then it was another trip straight downhill on the griefcoaster.

There’s no getting off this ride; I know that. And from what I’ve read and been told, the suddenness of it is part of the deal. As for the gym, maybe it was overly optimistic to think I could max out just seven weeks after my mom died, I’d been eating mostly cookies, and was full of feelings.

I think this gif is going to be my new guide for the foreseeable future:

via GIPHY

Just going about our lives is enough. Just keeping going, even when we’d rather get off the ride.

McSweeney’s delivers with the satire again, this time related to going back to the office after a loss and keeping it together:

Please Endorse Me on LinkedIn for “Good at Grieving”

Responded “good!” when a coworker asked me how I’m doing.

Responded “good!” when a different coworker asked me how I’m doing, and then when they clarified “no, but how are you really doing?” gave them enough information to make them feel important but not enough to actually give insight into the deep, emotionally shattering anguish I experience on a daily basis.

Dark cathartic humor aside, the end of the list is actually great–sometimes, it’s enough to just breathe. It’s enough to keep going for another day. We will be OK. Eventually.

I thought I’d have a relaxing weekend to report, but instead I had to help a friend get a new washing machine in a hurry on Saturday, our plans to hike were snowed out Sunday, and Monday I took Toby to the vet again for his ear, which was a really bad experience all around. (His ear is “just” a hematoma, though; originally they thought they’d need to biopsy it if the lump came back. Small blessings, right?)

So I was a mess by yesterday night. I’m trying to figure out any kind of “self care” beyond the gym or online shopping, but it’s hard. Everything is hard and I just want to call my mom and tell her about all of it.

I was scrolling Instagram yesterday and saw this in the Words of Women account, from Louise Erdrich’s poem “Grief.” It stopped me in my tracks and made me cry again, but then it made me feel better. Of course things are hard; it’s only been a month since Mom died and I’m so worried about Toby. I can give myself some compassion; I can try to take care of myself–as if I were a lost child and we’re trying to get home.

Our stray Oliver hasn’t been around since Friday night and we’re both pretty worried.

He had some sniffles Friday, so over the past four days I’ve imagined every scenario, most of them awful: His sniffles meant he couldn’t hear well, so a car got him. He surprised a raccoon and got in a fight and is hurt. He was sick enough animal control was able to catch him (generally a death sentence for a feral cat; they’re not very adoptable). Or he’s locked in someone’s shed or garage and can’t get out. I have about ten more scenarios in my head, none of them good.

We’ve been out walking, looking for any sign of him, calling his name (that he doesn’t really know). We’ve checked the shelter intake lists, just in case. I guess the next step is Lost Cat posters: “He’s pretty wild and doesn’t know his name and you can’t touch him, but he’s a good cat and we miss him.”

I don’t know. Sometimes he wasn’t very hungry when he would show up so we thought another house was feeding him. Maybe that house saw he was sick and took him in to the vet and got him fixed right away, like we meant to do, and they’re keeping him inside?

 

 

…

Just for something happier, here is a picture of Toby who stays inside always. He’s been extra cute lately; I think he wonders where Oliver is too.

I was going to wait about posting about the state of food TV in America and probably just not post about the movie about dolphin hunting. But then I saw that today is the 64th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. So let’s just get it all out today and go back to fluffy quotes tomorrow.

If you want to see pictures of the event and think about worldwide nuclear disarmament, check out the Big Picture blog.

So Mr. Isbell and I got into a domestic dispute Sunday morning, and in the middle of it I noticed that, instead of going to the public open space two blocks west, a neighbor woman had decided to play with her dog on our lawn–complete with a stack of Frisbees and the dog running into the flowerbed and planted garden.

I lost it:

And then of course I felt bad, because I was really mad about the argument that was going on and I could have told her to get lost in a nicer way. Poor lady had no idea what she was in for…