More On Cars...

So more on my red car analogy from yesterday.

Today is a day where I am not only noticing the red cars but really seeing how people are driving. And well, you know you get on busy roads right? You just want to leave them and go to Dairy Queen's drive through and eat ice cream in your car until it all feels better.

Or is that just me?

Oh.

Okay, so I've NEVER felt that way. Just ignore it.

This morning Brent and I talked politics, how can you help but talk them right now? Our democracy is dying.

And that was the first problem. The voice in my head (Grieving Denise?) thought I just don't have the capacity for more death right now. I'm full. But I pushed that aside as silly. Not related. Don't be so fucking dramatic. Yes Bad Denise talks to all of the other Denises in the same way that she gets shushed from talking to the outside world.

Then I got an email from a friend I haven't heard from in awhile. See, her husband died earlier this year and so she's been dealing with that. And Facebook has been stressing her out in a time she has no room for more stress. She's also full. But today she reached out to say I'm still here. And we talked for awhile and I forgot that she didn't know Mom had died. So I just tossed something about it in the conversation. And then was like...oh yeah...wait...sorry. I didn't mean to just slam that in there on you like that.

But we chatted for a little bit and talked about a mutual friend who lost her husband a few years ago and is doing okay. Nobody is ever doing perfect. None of us ever believe that. But doing okay is pretty damn good. And she really is. She's kind of a rock star really. Raising the kids, recently started seeing someone and that's so good. It doesn't mean she's over it. You never get over it. And you don't want to get over it. But it means she's learned how to keep living with it. And that's always the goal. How do you make your life keep working when it just stopped for awhile?

And we talked about how the first time you have a major death of someone close to you you aren't sure that you can. I mean you know logically that you can. You've seen others do it. So you know it can be done, but it doesn't feel like it when you are going through it. You cannot imagine that something could hurt like that and you can survive it. But once you've done it, you know you can do it. Sort of...

Because, man, those red cars are all a little different from each other aren't they?

Losing a parent, losing a friend, losing a spouse...really different.

A few months before Dad died a friend of mine lost his father. His parents had been married about the same amount of time that Mom and Dad had been. My mother is, was, an asker afterer. You know what I mean? If she met you, if she ever had a conversation with you, you were now on her list. In the years before Facebook I would get clippings she had saved for me, or phone calls. People I had gone to school with, that I had almost forgotten, my mother wouldn't have and if she saw something about them she let me know. "Oh you remember that sweet girl Becca who you went to Pre-First with? Well she opened an ice cream shop." No, I don't remember her, but yay? Once Facebook came around I was able to give my mother tidbits about people's lives which made her really happy. "Oh I always knew they'd grow up much nicer than their parents." My mother was good at side shade.

So anyway after Dad died and Mom would ask me about my friend's mother at first I didn't think much of it. It is, was (seriously having a hard time with the past tense), just her way. But after a few months I finally got it. She was measuring. Trying to see when she would feel better. And it wasn't working. When I would say, "Oh she's okay. She just got back from (insert trip here) and is planning on (insert trip here)." My mother would sigh and say she couldn't imagine when she would feel like that again. I finally had to tell her that her and Dad's relationship was very different than my friend's parents.

They were both driving red cars, but they had come from very different garages.

And that makes it so hard when you are dealing with your own grief and witnessing other people deal with theirs. You are trying to find a normal checkpoint and there isn't one. Every single time it's different. We can know that we will make it through because they have, or we have in the past, but we don't know when. We don't know how. We don't know how many "I'm fine" days we will get in a row before we are hit with a "the world is shit and I want ice cream" day.

Our democracy is dying.
I have friends who are grieving and I can't fix it for them.
And I'm an orphan.

I don't want my red car today.