I just finished a couple of books by Sarah Addison Allen. I started with the Sugar Queen and wrapped up with Garden Spells. Both of her books were most wonderful. It made me wish I had an apple tree in my back yard and Chloe's gift with books. My most wonderful librarian is 3 for 3. [On a side note, without my library card, I would always be broke. How wonderful is it to be able to walk into a place and borrow as many books as you can possibly read as many times as you can possibly imagine. To make it even worse, I have a library card that fits on my key chain. ]
It is almost time for my oil change and check up. I have appointments next month with everybody. I usually try and schedule everything around my birthday to keep track. I think the one I dread the most is with Dr. Clark. She has been my GYN for at least 10 years. She never fails to ask about Mom. She told me once after she had met Mom, that she would know she was my Mom without being introduced.
With Dr's visits, there is just the added level of terror at this point. Not being able to provide any type of history except Mom's kicks me right over the edge. I guess this is what happens when you watch too many shows on Discovery.
1 comment:
Robin,
my friend diane n. recommended your site to me. my mom died 5 years ago from pancreatic cancer. reading your blog brought back some memories...but most from that first year of grieving are lost to me in a blur. I can't remember christmas that year, my kids' birthdays, the following summer...all that time of intense pain, crying. not sleeping, trying to move and feeling like i was standing still...i know that's how it was, but honestly i don't recall it even when I try.
Time, time, time. Everyone told me it would take time, and i am most surprised of all to realize that they were right. I ended up taking ambien to help sleep, lexapro to help me talk instead of cry in therapy, but even after those medical aids ended, the abyss that was created when mom died was still there. And now, five years later, it's no longer an abyss. I still miss her and wish she was here, I felt incredibly sad when my daughter graduated and mom wasn't around to see her, I still wish she was here to call and talk to about things...but that missing, that sadness, is just that--it's not the overwhelming grief of a year past, it's a sadness that I can live with and don't feel permeating every moment of every day the way it did at first. I have joy in my life, I can remember her and smile without my eyes welling, I don't feel that I am going to get pancreatic cancer and leave my daughter the way I felt in the beginning. The doctor's office and the ER are just places again, not bad memories.
Everyone told me this too, and it was hard but it was the only advice I could follow: Be patient with yourself. Sometimes just breathing my way through a day was all i could do. It won't be this bad forever, it will get better, baby steps forward and back every day.
You'll be in my thoughts.
namaste,
amy
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