Nearly ten months before I lost my husband unexpectedly, I lost my mom unexpectedly. I have no idea how I will truly recover from either loss. I am learning you don't exactly *recover* from losing some of the most important people in your life, but instead you just sort of get better at carrying the good memories and the sad feelings with you. Always.
Losing my mom was devastating and caught us completely off guard. We knew she had been sick. She'd had a medical emergency months before which resulted in needing multiple blood transfusions. They told her she had a fatty liver. They even charted that they told her she had a fatty liver. They also charted that she, in fact, had advanced cirrhosis of the liver. Nothing about her lifestyle would have ever caused anyone to come to that conclusion. We were informed of her actual condition hours before she died, seven months after they had diagnosed it themselves. We knew she was sick. We kept trying to get her into the doctor, but they kept rescheduling her appointments or doing them via video call.
There is a LOT more to that story, but I'm just going to sum it up with this clip:
I'm convinced that IS their technical name.
So, we finally get her in to see a doctor, the doctor takes one look at her and sends her to the ER. They run a bunch of tests and decide to keep her overnight. We are called the next morning and are informed of her actual condition. And they told us as if we should have already known. And then she is dead by that evening. Just. Like. That. I need to get to my point. I'm starting to feel agitated again.
SO...I remember leaving the hospital with David. I remember having to stop at some shitty little gas station mini mart that was still open to try to buy something that my youngest needed. But I don't remember if I slept that night. Or how I slept that night. I was in complete shock. I must have slept at some point, because I remember waking up that next morning and, a few minutes later, remembering that my mom was dead. I felt like I was suddenly bowled over by this wave of confusion, disbelief, and shock with no sense of control or even an understanding of which way was up. David was next to me and the first thing I said to him that morning was, "I need to buy a new toaster." I don't remember exactly why I was so concerned about a toaster at that moment. Sure, our toaster was cheap and old. It seemed to have a direct line of communication with our smoke detector no matter how well we cleaned it. I had probably been bitching about that thing for months already. My best guess is that, with all the things I was feeling, all the control I did not feel like I had, I knew a toaster was something that I could control. While I was faced with a lot of terrible things, I didn't have to live with a shitty toaster anymore.
I finally ended up ordering a toaster on Amazon. It had a giant window in it so you could see the bread change color as it toasted. That seemed AMAZING to me. I was excited to get to watch my toast get toasted in real time. I think that excitement lasted for approximately two pieces of toast. And while it's still a pretty good toaster after nearly two years, it takes up way too much counter space and I still think of losing my mom when I look at it. Methinks it might be time to replace my grief toaster.
Since I lost David a little over 13 months ago, I have learned a lot about "widow's brain" and some of my temporary limitations. A substantial amount of fog has already lifted and I am already so much better than I was just six months ago. In what I can only assume is an attempt to straighten things out in my head and my life, I have started to buy storage bins and baskets in what I consider to be unreasonable amounts. I mean, it's really only unreasonable to me because I have not been able to use most of them yet. I have plans though. Big plans. I just have to be able to remember them. I should probably also admit that I have just purchased my third planner for this year. Planners can be very helpful in helping keep things straight, but aren't quite so effective if you forget they exist and fail to open them. Ask me how I know that.
More and more each day, I am learning that getting one's shit together after losing a spouse is a marathon, not a sprint. Actually, it's more like running a series of marathons with one shoe missing and no clear parameters.
Am I still going the right way? Am I even in the race anymore? Why does everything hurt? And where did all these plastic baskets come from?
