Caterwauling

This venturing out into the so-called “land of the living” thing is exhausting. I almost admire the people who keep their distance from me because if you don’t know what to say, it’s best to stay silent.

Case in point: the mall. I should have known better than to go today. But I really just wanted to buy a pair of shoes, and everything’s picked-over and I know the parking lots are a no-man’s land, but I figured fuck it, I need to get out of the damn house already.

I stopped at Caribou for a break from annoying people and just a quiet moment in general. And those of you who know me know that I’m usually chatting up everyone in line and the cashiers and just trying to pass the time pleasantly. But today? It was all I could do to not throw hot coffee on anyone who pissed me off.

I ordered my stupid little coffee and as I waited for it, the woman in line behind me went on and ON about how she spent five hours wrapping gifts last night and four hours this morning, she has so many. And that she’s so exhausted and has so much more shopping to do and gawd, the money that just slips through her hands.

The three women behind her chimed in, commiserating, but she was looking right at me for a response. I don’t know why — my face is anything but friendly these days. I kept just trying to smile and not say a word, but when they all started pissing and moaning (playfully, I guess) about how the holidays are just SO hard with all the fuss, I got my drink and said, “I’m having no Christmas — I just had a death in my family.” And I kept walking.

I hate to ruin everyone’s parade. I know too many people like the way I just acted today — those who cannot possibly allow anyone to have a moment of victory or joy because WAH, nobody’s paying attention to them and their iddy biddy widdle problems. Boo fucking HOO.

It’s like, just let me feel bad for my grandfather, OK? Don’t make me pity you because you have so much money and so much family surrounding you that you just can’t take it. Wah, fuck off. You know what I’m geting this Christmas? A baseball bat to bludgeon you with.

I guess I never thought of the holidays as a burden. Sure, it was always a familial obligation, but it involved a nice dinner and maybe, if we could afford it, one or two gifts apiece. Last year my gift was a nice dinner and a good sleep in a nice house. My gift was having a bed in my own little bedroom in my family’s new house — I’d slept on the couch or rented hotel rooms for the prior decade-plus, so my grandfather was very proud to finally be able to give me a place to truly call “home.” It was the best gift ever.

So boo hoo to your fucking paper cuts, seriously. Call someone who cares — I ain’t answerin’.

Mom got something similar today. She was out running errands and someone said to her, “You look so sad, like you just lost your best friend.” She said she had, actually. And the person was stuttering and stumbling and sorry he ever spoke.

It’s by our nature that we typically help people to smooth over what they never dreamed would be a mistake to say, but it’s tiring. Some days, it’d just be nice to meet someone who exhibits some sense, for a change — someone who realizes that the world doesn’t, in fact, revolve around them and that others might just be doing their damndest to get through a day and even that’s a challenge.

While mostly everyone in my world has been a dream and a real friend, there’s always that one or two whom you wish you could just beat with a cluestick. Those are the ones in the outer periphery — the ones who could fall off the planet and never in a million years be missed. Those are the ones who are only out for their own purposes and have no concept of how bad I’m hurting — how hard I’m trying to get with the program already. I was telling my friend last night about one in particular, and my friend reminded me that I’m not going to forget who’s been good to me … and I’m not going to forget the one or two who weren’t. And she said when it’s their time of need, she hopes I will be just as cold.

I don’t think it’ll be hard — I think I’ve used up my compassion supply till 2008, at the earliest.

Not the same thing, but related, I was having a discussion with someone who told me I’m going to drive myself insane with guilt, with remorse, with anger. He said that it was my grandfather’s time to go, plain and simple. That he’d lived a good life and it was done, the end. That his number was basically up and you can’t keep God from taking him home when it’s his time.

I rallied “bullshit” and said just one week before his death, my grandfather was talking and laughing and eating and joking and planning. He was in a real hospital and his pain was controlled and he was alive and wonderful. It’s when that fuckup of a VA Hosptial took him back — ripped him from the good hosptial — that it all went to shit. They morphined him up and he slept fitfully 24/7 because he had enough drugs in him to knock him out but not enough to keep him sobbing and screaming with pain.

The death certificate said the cause was a myocardial infarction. Heart attack. The man didn’t have heart problems. I think he was in so much agony that his body gave out. I think he’d tried so hard to stay with the program but died from the torture. For Christ’s sake, we shoot animals in less pain! Where is the humanitarianism? The fucking VA gets its drugs for less than what Medicare pays — could they not spare him any good ones?

The last night I saw him, I’d asked his fuckwit of a doctor what else he could be given instead of morphine, and she said that was it. I said there are other drugs on the market — hell, demerol, even. He was sleeping with his eyes open and moaning and writhing in pain on the morphine — NOT WORKING. She said that’s it.

That same night, I approached his nursing staff to say he was in so much pain — I hated him being on the morphine (I made that clear) and asked what alternatives there might be to get him off that but get him comfortable. They looked stupefied. The one nurse, Jeff, even said that they could give him more morphine but any more drugs would push him “over to the other side.”

And hours later, one wonders if that’s what happened.

They said they found him unresponsive. Given that the staff itself is unresponsive, I wonder how long he had to lie there before anyone got a fucking clue. I can’t get the image out of my head, of him being under a sheet and them transporting him to the morgue. I can’t believe I am actually typing all of these words — that he didn’t pass over peacefully. I told that fuckhead doctor that I wanted to take him home right then, when we talked and he was still alive. I said we were willing to do anything just to get him home and let him enjoy the rest of his days, far away from them.

And maybe I’m being irrational, but one wonders if they just didn’t purposely kill him, although they sure did a hell of a job, Brownie, without trying.

So to the person who told me that it was his time, fuck you, too. Say you’re sorry to hear it, that it sucks and damn, he was a good man to have been a parent to you. And stop there. My cats get better medical care than that wonderful man was afforded.

In fact, a gal at work told me that she had a clause put into her living will that she get the same level of care that a family pet would at the end stages of life. Do whatever it takes to keep her functioning — if you’d do it for a cat or a dog, you’d best do it for her. And if that means good drugs to help her pass into that gentle good night, then hot damn, do it.

A gal at work just lost her father, and had to fly to China two days after the fact because that was the first available flight to get to him. I cannot imagine that flight. It reminded me, though, of being in the Vegas airport at 11 p.m. in the smoking lounge (shut up) and a good-looking guy about my age dressed in a suit came to ask me for a light.

He said his dad had died in Florida and he’d be arriving just in time for the services. He was dressed in case his luggage got lost — he’d be ready and not fussing. I remembered praying I wouldn’t have to make a similar ride (drive, in my case). God, that was a whirlwind, because I did. Never in my life drove 250 miles in three hours. And why, because there was no rush. All I was doing was meeting with the funeral director when I got there.

I keep hoping that some miracle will drop out of the sky, you know? I don’t know what to wish for — my only wish was to have my grandfather home from the hospital for Christmas. So, you see where my faith in wishes — and everything else — has gone.

I do, however, wish that those who are having a good holiday and don’t deserve it will enjoy it, and I hope they know they don’t deserve it and aren’t planning on their luck continuing. And for those who deserve to have a good holiday and good things in general, I hope those wonderful things come their way. I think that would be the only thing that would bring balance to this world right about now.

As for me, I need to have a chat with the Goddess to figure out why my visions led me to believe that my grandfather would come through this just fine. But like T and I were saying yesterday, Denial is great — we’re tall and skinny and cute waiters are bringing us amazing cocktails. There are no mirrors, just blue waters and white-sand beaches, in Denial.

Oh, well. I’ll get through this. Thank God I have a safe place to land, right where I am. I’m not sure where God was when my grandfather was struggling to hold on, but I have no doubt that I will be taken care of by reams of angels who, if they couldn’t do right by him, are going to make it up to me in any way they can.

And I’m going to let them.

I am thinking of bugging out of a Christmas party I’m supposed to attend tonight. You know, not being ready for happy people and all. *holds hair back, pukes*

I was thinking last night how, wow, this isn’t where I thought I’d be at 32. My career has finally caught up with my expectations, which had been my biggest ongoing struggle to date. But now, it’s time to work on the life outside of it.

I was also thinking that, wow, once I am supporting my Mom, well, there goes any chance I might have of trapping landing a man. But I hope not — she’s part of the package, just like any single parent brings a child into any new relationship. Initially she may be a dependent (hello tax credit!) but I know she doesn’t want to be a burden and once we get her established, I hope she’ll meet a sugar daddy who will take care of her. (Hey, if I’m gonna dream, do it big, right?)

The weird thing is that I’m not opposed to any of this. I want her down here. I want to help her right now, because I can. Because I always knew a day would come when all the elders (who got sick in succession — Mom’s taken care of her grandmother, mother and father without a break in-between) would be gone.

My grandmother had always told me to skip college — to get some crap job and save up for a car and wait to meet a good man. But that’s the thing. She got the best man out there. Her life worked out that way. I saw my mom date too many clowns, losers and bozos to believe in Prince Charming coming to find me.

Besides, like I said, I always knew that once everyone was gone, I’d be the one left standing. That’s why I left home at 18, to go to school and live on my own and eventually move out-of-state — to develop my own life, one that was insulated and isolated from everything. Something I could escape to, return to, take solace in.

I guess I took all the opportunities and now I can share them with someone who needs nothing more than escape and solace.

And it’s a lonely city here. Really it is. It will be nice to have someone to go to dinner with, someone to help upkeep the apartment, someone who cares that I walk this earth. Now, I need my space and am a terrible roommate because I’m happier being alone, but I’ll work on me. Maybe it’ll prepare me for something different in the future — something more what I had in mind.

That’s the thing. I had a very different picture in my head of me at 32. I guess I always had a loose plan, to get married in my early 30s, to possibly be persuaded to shit out a kid by 36 — I know medical science will allow me to be fertile well into my 60s, but I don’t want to be 110 at my kid’s high school graduation.

I’m so afraid Mom and I will end up like Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest in “Practical Magic”, with people skulking up to the spinsters’ house in the middle of the night to ask us to cast spells for them. Because you know we would! (Leave your money on the nightstand. *cough*)

I was just thinking about how many times I did something locally — festivals, fairs, restaurants, whatever — and called Mom to say that the next time I had her and my granfather in town, I wanted to take them there. And now, she’ll be right here to enjoy all the things that I do. I hope she’ll like it here — I hope this is the change in life that she’s been needing, and that she takes it and runs with it and makes things happen for herself.

And maybe someday, I can hire her as my nanny and it will serve as the world’s justification for the recent miserable, fucked-up series of events that led us to this place in our lives.

And in that, I can start looking forward to the next phase of this journey. …

In writing about the adventures of obnoxious great-uncles, here’s a gem about Uncle Pester (recall, the one who picked a fight with me at the casket).

He’s got a daughter who’s a little older than me who loves him to death. Fought for him when he was getting shoddy medical care (went into the hospital with the flu and had to have open-heart surgery due to all his misadventures there). It kills me that he came through all this and is still an evil asshole and my sweet grandfather didn’t fare so well.

Uncle Pester’s daughter came home from work two hours early on the day of my grandfather’s viewing. Pester happened to call her and get her on the phone, and he asked what she was doing home so early. She’d replied, “I came home two hours early to get pretty.”

His answer? “Then you should have come home last week.”

Seriously. This is what I’m related to. *kick*

My cousin loved my grandfather — like a dad, as did practically everyone in the family.

And we wonder why I say the wrong one was in that coffin. …

I guess this is the point where you have to stop hurting (or, at least, disguise it enough that you seem like you’re functioning at capacity again). You were there through the illness, you left for bereavement, you’ve been back physically if not mentally. So when do you just wake up and return to your old self?

Or can you?

Not being able to save my grandfather from the half-wits at the VA Hospital has wrecked me for life. That I didn’t take him out of there, or just elsewhere, will weigh on me every day till the end of time. And I know, I exhaust myself with arguments to the contrary. That, why was it my responsibility to do so, why did I have so little faith in the system, why am I not allowing myself to move on?

Why can I not just focus on the mounting pile of urgent tasks in front of me instead of staring at the wall and wondering what, if anything, I can do to make things right?

In a weird way, I’m starting to be a tiny, itty bitty bit OK, and I don’t like it. Things are still the same for me — I still live in the same place (alone), still have a great job (and a promotion that I have no idea why they think I’m smart or capable enough to handle, especially not now when my brain cells are jelly), still had a hope of just buying myself a stupid laptop computer for Christmas.

Which, ha. Funerals ain’t free.

If there are lessons to learn in all of this for me, it’s that living paycheck-to-paycheck may be a way of life, but it’s not a good one. Having the worst credit score in the world means not being able to borrow when you need help. Whether it’s insurance or savings or a rich, non-stingy relative, you need backup.

I think a lot of us isolate ourselves in this world, mostly as a matter of convenience and not always by choice. Then again, as I sit here staring at a pile of e-vites and wondering how to graciously tell everyone that Santa Claus joined the Taliban because I cannot stand the thought of being around happy people right now, I guess it is a choice. No one’s going to beg you to live your life the right way.

And sainthood? Doesn’t pay. I believe in being good and I think that’s the only reason my family members who have passed had good lives. They didn’t have anything materially but they ended things having one or two good, lifelong friends. And that’s more than a lot of people can say. Good people set the example for everyone else who ever came near them — when you come across hateful, spiteful and just plain useless people, you tend to forgive them and feel bad for them because they weren’t brought up right. And people like us want to save everyone, to show them love and how to be good. But it comes at the expense of not looking out for yourself first.

Like right now, I’m so exhausted from handling the weight of the world that I feel useless to those who are depending on me — those who might want me to help them or, hell, those who are paying me to help them. I am not only spent and inconsolable, but I’m also sick. I have a sinus infection that makes me unable to wear makeup. I haven’t had a period for two months and damn it, you still get bloated and achy and cranky even when it doesn’t show up.

And the damn coffee machine’s broken — need I say more?

I feel like that coffeemaker. I feel like there’s nothing left to give right now and I just want to be unplugged and left alone for a little while longer. Unless I can be fixed, which, great. But the second that service guy comes in to make that magic box provide us with happy juice again, we’re all going to be in line, working it to death again. And I don’t want that to be me. I need the distraction, but I want to figure out how to enjoy this life that keeps kicking my ass as it’s passing me by.

I see how we end up — alone and suffering in a hospital bed. The funeral director had to wipe the torture off my grandfather’s face to make him presentable for an open casket. That hospital left him in so much pain that hours’ worth of work resulted in him looking not very much at peace, and certainly not as handsome and laid-back as he was in life.

I don’t want that to be me. I’ve got to break the cycle. I don’t want to hurt my whole life and hurt going straight into my demise.

I want to live and love and thrive. I want to be good to others but good to myself first. I want to shine as much as I can so that when the light goes out, the earth will still be warm from my glow.

I think that happened with my grandfather. I just wish we could say he was able to enjoy at least a portion of all the good karma that he generated — I wish it had come back to help him when he needed it most. But I guess that it gets paid forward — if so, my mom and I are in for a lot of luck, with all the great things he did. I just want to slow down enough to enjoy them when they come. …

I swear to GOD, I hate my cats. I rarely buy boots, and when I do, they are of the best quality around and they have to be bone-colored. (Winter white, off-white, whatever — I do not do well with dark shoes.)

Anyway, I had a favorite pair that I was counting on getting me through this winter. (Even though they’re dress boots and not worth a good god damn when it actually SNOWS or anything.) I wore them to work today. Per usual, I was in a hurry and a dither and trying to overcome the hangover from five (!) sleeping pills. (Yes, it takes that many now.)

So I was having a meeting in my new, pretty little office when I crossed my legs and noticed that my cats, while I was out-of-town, had eaten through the heels of my boots. Is leather tasty? Do they LIKE having me consider donating them to the local Vietnamese restaurant after they piss me off? I could just SCREAM — what am I going to do for cute winter footwear? All I have are about 120 pairs of high-heeled sandals to fall back on! ARGH!

I keep thinking about how much life is going to change once Mom hits town, but you know what? If she can keep those two little four-pawed monsters in check for me (and bake me cookies), I think everything will turn out peachy-keen. …