The session today was ok. It started off somewhat lite with me talking about how I handled some frustrating issues at work, and how my search for a new job was going. She also asked about the blog and I told her that I wrote something before coming today. She reiterated that she won't read my blog unless I want her to and I have to be very specific. She doesn't want me worrying that she's reading it without my full permission. I did want to talk about 'the hug' from last session and tell her what I wrote about earlier, but I couldn't work it up. Too embarrassing and needy I guess.
We did venture down a conversation about why I don't think it's ok for me to get 'things' or be worthy of receiving 'things'.
When I was about 15 my brother tried to kill himself. We were upstairs and he was in his bedroom trying to swallow razor blades. My sister and I were in our bedroom listening to him scream that he wanted to die. He was hysterical. My mother stayed in my bedroom with my sister and me and she kept yelling back at him to stop. She was hysterical too. It was all so weird. At one point my mother grabbed my sister and I and started yelling back at my brother that he'd better stop as he was 'scaring the girls'. And oddly enough I kept getting madder and madder at my mother. I was, and still am convinced that she wasn't really concerned that my brother was scaring us, her only concern was herself. That she couldn't handle this situation and she was using us to get to my brother. Luckily my father came home from work and ran in to stop my brother.
Did I beleive then, and do I beleive now that my mother wasn't concerned about me because I wasn't worthy of being concerned about?
It was such a wild scene, and although my brother was then sent 'away' for a couple of weeks it was never talked about, never ever. But the thing that has always struck me was my belief that my mother was using me.
When I was leaving my session today I was very conscious of 'the hug'. When she reached to open her office door I knew she wasn't going to offer one, just by the way she stood. So I passed by her and walked out to the waiting area, thinking the whole time that she forgot, I knew it, I knew she would forget. I was actually pleased because I could now be mad at her. As I reached for the door handle of the outer door she started 'hey, don't I get my hug?' Damn. Sort of. I was disappointed that I now couldn't be mad at her. And then conversly, happy that she remembered. Why did I want to be mad at her.
On the way home, while lost in post-therapy thoughts I noticed a shiny black mini-van in front of me. I guess it stuck out because it was so shiny and clean, and you don't see too many black mini-vans. Black SUV's, yes, but not mini-vans. I looked down to the license plate where I noticed the word 'HEARSE'. Then it made sense why it was black. Then all of a sudden I was thrown back to the day my dad died.
It was 5:00am on a sunny Sunday morning. I got the call the day before from the nursing home that my dad was in his final stages. We all knew this was coming, but it still catches you off guard. When I got the call I was actually getting myself and my daughter ready to go over and spend the morning with him. But that plan quickly changed. I had to find someone to watch my daughter, as M was working, and then contact all my brothers and sisters to give them the bad news. We were all by my dad's side within 2 hours of the initial call. The rest of the day was so weird. Waiting for him to die, not wanting him to die. The nursing home brought in food. We laughed, we cried. It was all so sureal.
On his 75th birthday we had created a dvd that was a montage of pictures from his life, and it was set to music. That dvd must have looped through over 1000 times that day. Sometimes it was just background noise, and then other times it brought laughter, and then other time it was tears.
My mother didn't want to let my father go. The woman from the hospice pulled me aside and said that I should try and convince my mother to talk to my dad and tell him it was ok to die. The woman felt that my dad may be trying to hang on, for my mother's sake, not wanting to hurt her. But I couldn't convince my mother, nor could my sisters.
Eventually, at about 11:00pm that night, with all 14 of us still in the room, we decided that everyone but 2 of us should go home and get some rest. I was one of the ones who begrudgingly left. It was the last time I would see him alive.
I couldn't sleep, so at 4:30am I got up, got dressed and headed back to the nursing home. I texted my brother and sister asking for their coffee orders and letting them know I would be up shortly so they could go home for a bit. In the reply back, my brother said not to rush, my dad had just died.
It was one of the worst moments of my life, I was right up the street. When I got there the doctor's hadn't even declared him 'officially' dead. I went to his bedside and just put my head on his chest and cried. I swore he was still there.
Eventually another brother came, so my brother and sister that had stayed overnight felt they could now leave, they had been up all night. So my older brother and I just sat in my dad's room. The dvd still looping through. And we continued watching, not really saying much.
After a while I told him that I was going to go out to the lobby and watch for the people from the funeral home to come. It was still early on a Sunday morning so I knew their wouldn't be any staff available yet to point them to my dad's room. For some reason I assumed that the people from the funeral home would be like the folks that normally greet you at a wake. Tall, slim, older, and well dressed, driving the traditional long limo/hearse. Instead the guys that showed up were a cross between the Blues Brothers and Secret Service agents. Their suits were ill fitted, in fact thei suits were so worn that I assumed these were the only suits they owned. But they were quiet and focused, much like secret service agents, atleast like the ones in the movies. And they were driving a black mini-van. Not a nice long, shiny, black limo. No, a freakin' mini-van.
I had just seen the wizard behind the curtain, and I wasn't happy. But at the same time I had to chuckle a bit to myself. My dad was more of a mini-van kind of guy than a limo guy anyway. He would have found the humor as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment