update

First time I've been able to update in a few days. It's been a rather busy and trying time.

I can't write about Saturday night, not until after the funeral and after things have settled down a little. I'll want to process it at some point, because now it's just a confusing mix of images and emotions: all of us gathering around my mother, waiting for the doctor, greeting the doctor, being there while she died, calling people to let them know, then saying goodbye to her when the funeral home people came to get her. The good and the bad and the infuriating and the heartbreaking are all blurred together.

The next few days are also somewhat of a blur, what with seeing the funeral home people, starting to plan the funeral, saying goodbye to my cousin Ingrid, and generally being unable to stop long enough to process everything. A disorienting mixture of the surreal and the mundane.

For now, all I can do is keep trundling on the funeral-planning route. And hope that once it's over, we can settle a bit and get on with coping with my mother's absence.

Thank you all, sincerely, for all of your expressions of love and support over the last few days - actually, over the last several months. It has helped, a great deal. I'll be able to respond to people individually over the weekend, I hope, but for now please accept my thanks to you all.

( To do lists )

Nucking Futz

I'm working on my mother's eulogy and vividly remembering what my mom used to say all the time: that at weddings and funerals you see the best and the worst that the human race has to offer.

Right now, the 'worst' is Chris' stepmother going apeshit because we didn't think it would be a great idea to have her and Chris' dad at the funeral at the same time, so we asked her not to come because he'd offered to come first and had already bought his ticket and was on his way down here.

Well, she's feeling rejected. She wanted to come to show her love and respect for my mother. And apparantly right now, today, at 11:00pm the day before my mother's funeral, three days after her death, when Chris is supposed to be helping me to write her eulogy, is the perfect time to show her respect by airing out this latest grievance and tracing it back to its origins into the depths of prehistory and point out to Chris, in a conversation lasting over an hour, that he is a bad son, bad brother, bad person, most probably a bad therapist...

God damn. I thought Chris was being paranoid when he said he was going to ask her not to come. I honestly thought that as long as she got a warning about Chris' dad, she'd behave like an adult and not cause a disturbance at the funeral itself. But I'm totally eating my words now. I'm so grateful Chris decided to ignore me and ask her not to come anyway.

Jesus frigging Christ. I don't believe this.

And I so wish I could go vent to my mom about this right now.