chop wood. carry water.

When I get time....I bleed my thoughts into words...but I don't publish much anymore...I am not sure why I'm here.

I have gotten myself so focused on projects that need to get done around here...and Lil still goes to bed pretty late - so my grief is now something I don't know what to do with -it seeps out in random moments, some days it gushes - I always regret sharing it with even my closest friends, hard to explain why, I just always wish I hadn't said anything once I do...

The new counselor I was starting seeing was ridiculous. Not useful. I'm sad. What the hell is she going to do about it?

"Grief counseling" -that specifically was fine - but she only does so many sessions or something, based on her credentials. And anyway, even our grief counselor didn't know what to do by the time we lost a third person in a horrible manner... we are in our own strange category of "complicated grief" if you want to be technical. And really, I know, things are not as bad as it could be - right? I'm supposed to remind myself of that. But each loss is so separate and so HUGE and each was totally sudden and unexpected, and all were awful, awful, awful circumstances. And we loved them each dearly - we were not astraged to any of them... they were our family.

So, my husband and I each thought, "what the hell - our insurnace is maxed, everything we do is covered 'till the end of the year, so, yea, bring on a counselor, one for each of us." Neither he nor I have gone to see anyone with the new year. I'm not paying money to waste my time... She is a very nice lady. But she has NO clue where I am and that is all I can see when I'm there with her... she doesn't get it....she can't (and that's a GOOD thing, for her sake). So it was just dumb.

So. the days go by. Fast. With kids, even one kid, the days go by so fast... So when and where do I go down into my cavern of sadness where I'm trying to sort it all out. When do I drink a little from each bitter cup I must quaff...if I can... And how I hate it that, when it is time to go to bed, my mind is weak and tired and I can't fight the dramas it plays out...

Most often I go over and over in my head the things I wish I did differently for Gwen (regardless of how it would or wouldn't have turned out, but just so I could feel on this side of things like I did everything I could. I don't feel that way...it is so frustrating - I can't settle). And I try to imagine what Marie....oh God, she fell off a rocky edge - it wasn't a cliff face or anything, it was just a random spot a little off the trial with some rocks and pine needle ground and more rocks. It looked out at a bunch of trees, not over the tops, but straight out at the tops, level with the top of the pines and trees. You couldn't see the bottom, you could feel a slant, you knew you had to be careful... but... the story from her friend will never quite work in my head, so that is hard to live with... I know, she tried to grab something, the marks the investigators saw on her arm showed it... she tried to live.

We needed her. We were already torn and gutted. And she was taken. I don't know what her last moments were like but it isn't okay what I think it was like... and I'll never see her again here. No matter how much I want to, or can't stand the thought bouncing around in my head that tells me she is no more... I'll not see her again. Somehow I'm supposed to label this too, a "new normal" and "move on". I can't comfort her for what happened to her... no one can. We can never share it with her or help her with it... and it must have been so frightening even if it was fast... and she is alone in it and we are here...

Each of her 6 siblings (I'm just an in-law) is grieving in their own way and I respect that... I know they don't want to hear how devastated I am - to them I didn't loose as much as them - yet I know, I lost something different, I know what I lost and there is so much pain - and it is lonely to be judged here even as I don't fault them or really concern myself much about it...they have their right to feel as they do so that's fine. And don't get me wrong, they haven't said anything...it's all good and I love them each so much...

One e-mail I found - on the very morning where I really couldn't stop thinking - "did she know how much I loved her - that she was a sister to me" - I found her e-mail that she wrote me in reply to one of mine - and it it, she clearly acknowledges this, and she is the one who brings up the very subject... word for word she wrote that she knew how much I loved her that that I was truly a sister to her. My thought that morning was "did she know" - and I read that not an hour later...

What hurts is that I didn't read the e-mail to heart when I received it and I never replied (busy. I hate that word. Idle hands are not of the devil. Busy hands are. Business is the evil in this world.) Gwen's situation did pull the rug out from under us - but was I really too busy to be in better touch with Marie? To be a real sister to her and follow up with a conversation which I initiated when I had concerns for some stuff going on in her life.

Please, don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to say I could have changed anything... I have no illusions about my "power" - you loose three people - you get your lesson well - control, plans, influence - it's all nice and pretty and sometimes you'd swear it's real... But, yes, I wish I had at least replied and acknowledged the "sister thing" back to her... and it sucks because instead, I don't think I knew as much as she knew, how "sister" we were, and now, oh now.....yea, I get it. Damn. I get it. And I'm mad I'm never going to get to laugh and be happy with her again. I loved her. So much. I just adored her. I enjoyed her. Her laugh... thank God I can still hear it. Thank God. I don't' want to ever loose that...but I think it will happen...

She was so young... I watched her grow up - I remember so vividly the moment I saw her come down the stairs to greet us - we had just arrived from our road trip for our visit - and I saw her and my breath left me - now I knew what all those people meant when they had said it to me - she had grown up! Her features were young woman, the little child was a memory now and here she was and she was so beautiful. The last time we visited she was a little girl. I'm sure she didn't know or feel all grown up - but that is the "young" part of young woman and I saw it clearly. There was a sister now who suddenly wasn't a "little sister" anymore, but a friend-sister. I don't want her gone. How will I see her grow up? How will I know what she is going to do in life? I don't know how to just drop it all... even as there isn't a choice and it's already dropped.

I won't get to her brother here...I can't... I don't know if I ever will... it seems too hard to really begin to delve into. Loosing Gwen and the circumstances creates one form of pain, Marie and the way she died another and Winship - completely another "type" of pain. I can't put my finger on what it is that I feel stuck on - perhaps it is simply and only because Gwen was enough. I'm barely "at" Marie. The balance was tipped with Gwen...where do you go from there?

He was older than Marie, younger than my husband and I. We were just with him...just beginning to try to cope with him...the loss of her... I hate whatever was inside his head that day - I HATE IT. Something took him... something opportunistic took him in a weak moment.... and we failed to save him from his demons. Damn crap that goes on inside our stupid heads. Stupid brains. Stupid pain.

---

I don't know how to carry to much pain and sadness - I can't handle that we lost Winship too... and no, to my counselor who thought she "got me," I'm not mad at him - I'm SAD for him - for how he lost the battle - grief is a war zone. He lost his father at 12 and he could never adjust his sails - I don't think he ever had anyone tell him, that the storm wouldn't ever totally go away, it would be faced again and again in new and different ways... and that all you can do is adjust the sails as best you can each time it stirs up again... He was not weathering this first storm well, even as it was 11 years ago that it entered his life... only so recently had he started to find himself some calmer waters, but it was so new, the loss of his sister, the younger one, his little sis, the one he grew up with, picked on and messed with and recently really connected with and cared for, just starting a grown-up sibling relationship, this loss ...the new storm overtook him...

I'm not mad at him, I'm desperately sad and mad as hell that yet again, even as my husband drove 8 hours over night to go to his brother knowing he was troubled, instead my husband had to see another loved one, this time at the bottom of a high waterfall laying among some rocks. Do you know what it is like to hold your baby as your baby gets colder and colder and you know you are supposed to get up and walk away, without your baby? How could my husband be asked to find out hours later his sister fell to her death while grieving the loss of Gwen. How could my husband be asked to several months later see his brother, dead, after suicide?

WHAT do you do with all this? How do you feel like the world is ever "normal" again. What the hell do you do with all of this now all in your head...?

I know - I know - that all I know - is this moment. Here. Exactly. I'm not spouting philosophically "live in the moment." But, sheer cold realism and total safety and only sureness of now. I can only know right now, and here. I can't protect anyone from what's next...and life isn't about what happens next. It's about what is done in the now. And out of total helplessness comes this "idea".

It is actually hard, oddly so, hard for me to worry these days. I don't have the energy for it... instead, if anything, I'm worried about the past... and how useless is that? But what do you do when what is behind you is set, cast, done and unchangeable but doesn't square in your brain?

You wash the dishes. You fold the laundry. You try to fall asleep and feel like you never get a good rest. You wake up tired and angry. You love your child so much and hate the way you let yourself get so run down...you work really hard to not let your child see her real mother - you love her so much, most of the time you can do it cause you just love her so much and know her childhood is in your hands - but you hate yourself when your patients runs out and she sees whats just underneath and you contradict everything you teach her and ask of her.... You are humbled by her sweet nature, forgiving nature, and are challenged both by her and by your daughter not here - how do I serve my love for Gwen if I'm worse for her having been here? Is she a blessing or not, two months or twenty years..do I believe my words or not?

Emotionally exhausted. Tired of humanity. Raw. An angry advocate for the life Gwen didn't get to live among her cousins and her friends she'll never play with...But, quietly, I do that quietly, less it seems I'm not thrilled and happy for each of them...I am, I'm in awe they are all beautiful and strong and healthy - I GET how amazing life is and more so when it forms right, is born healthy and grows up... believe me, I love her cousins, her friends...her sister...but I'm supposed to see her not there and lament that she didn't get that... I'm her mommy, who the hell else will do that for her? Who else will notice her not here and care?

I will. Someday. I'll be able to notice her not here and show how much I care by doing something in her name, big or small, something - I will honor her every moment here and with her name, continue her blessings flowing (I work for her, I have a job by her...) and bless those I can in ways I figure out... I will... she assigned this...

I have to...

(and the way my mind works, I say, I hope I don't die first, I really want to do something for Gwen while I'm here but I know I could stand up from this stool and drop dead....I know this world, I'm on to it - plans, ha, plans...go ahead make plans.... but please, God, please let me do things for Gwen, please let me stay, not to mention my Lil - I don't ever want to leave her so please let me stay as long as I can ...and for her sake, I don't want her to suffer a loss like ours... so please, God, please..... god? Yea. My brain. Not a pretty place.)

But for now....I hope... I hope I can start existing again, actual breaths that get to my lungs...

I've been getting dinner on the table by 6:30 for a week now. That is HUGE for me. I've cleaned things out and organized things that needed organizing... I don't spend my days moping. But it feels like there is chatter, constant chatter in my head... a conversation ongoing, in the background constantly... and one day, if I survive long enough, maybe I'll even have time to really sit with it all, listen to it all, hear it all out and do whatever it is you "do" with it... that is my highest hope, to untangle and think all my thoughts... but even so, on my worst days I just want to, as I begged above, to survive long enough to at last, oh to die.... I have no quarrel, no fear, no issue with death and honestly, I long and hope to see Gwen again, but eternal peace at any price of any kind at this point is fine with me (I come with a little bit of cynicism these days, it seeded itself, can't help it... it's there, won't go away... pesky little weed).

BUT, I need to be here, because I have Lil and I love her so much it hurts, I know exactly how much I love her (the blinders are off) and also I don't want her to feel anything like this, what loss feels like... So I want to survive long enough and ideally never leave Lil, but if and when I must, oh a quiet mind sounds so appealing. I won't hasten it, don't worry... this is not anything like that. I'm just really tired. It's been a long year...and I haven't been sleeping well again for the past few nights, so really, I'm beat right now, that's all....

-
So I should stop this rant and go to bed...

And yea. Sure. In the End all this works out for good. I'll tell that to Lil. I'll believe it sometimes too... but for the most part, I don't even have the energy for that - I am just here in the moment and my kitchen is not cleaning itself.

chop wood. carry water.

I don't need to pay a counselor to tell me that. Maybe a maid to clean up two days of pots and pans and to run the dishwater for me so I can go to bed... but in the end, that is it... feed the cats, raise my child, be kind to my husband, tolerate the world... that's enough for one day.

wood. water. ...history waits for no one and dishes don't clean themselves...