It's been a very tough summer.
I guess I knew that I'd have a delayed reaction to my mom's death ... why wouldn't I? When she first got sick, and during her short, terrible illness I had to be strong. And then after. And did you know that the trial for my brother's wrongful death was going on right at the same time of her death? So still I needed to be strong. And, then we lost that trial. Somehow an allergy clinic that let a perfectly healthy 37 year old die after he took a shot he had taken a zillion times before was deemed faultless. Go figure.
And then, the day before my brother's birthday, my sister-in-law announced to my dad that she is moving in with her new boyfriend (a fact that my rational mind is in favor of; but my emotional mind still struggles with). There's more. I gained weight. I started eating improperly. My mother, despite the endless lecturing, was my north star, the sometimes cock-eyed wisdom through which I made all of my decisions.
Still, I thought I was doing okay. But my stomach didn't. My intestines, she started to rumble. Gurgle, gurlge, spurt. Then Peter Jennings died and Dana Reeve was diagnosed and I couldn't turn on a TV or pick up a magazine without a long, involved conversation about lung cancer. My dad called me to tell me that his oldest friend and colleague has three months to live. And then the inevitable: Mr. Hemmorrhoid, how do you do?
I am so sorry to take you there. But I am not repressed and this was a doozy. I couldn't sit, I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. And I couldn't help but see the metaphorical possibilities in this scenario.
My work friends, bless them, kindly took my outbursts in stride as I complained about the most personal of problems, wrought in tears of woe. And Wednesday, lying prone with the best doctor in town, I had the little bugger excised. And I feel, or at least I'm choosing to feel, that my most recent depression, my most recent descent into the dark side has also been excised, leaving me freer, better and more able to concentrate on sunshine, roses and, I'm terrified to say, Barbie ... because I bought one for Mia this week ... making this blog into a recap of two things I never thought I'd talk about.
Onward and upward. Cause there's no where else to go!
