Appreciate the notes on the last entry and am a bit embarrassed, I was shooting for poking a bit of fun at the idea of a grief counselor with just a dash of I-might-be-losing-my-shit-on-other-fronts. Shrinkology and it’s assorted second cousins are a bit like religion, you gotta bring your own mojo to the table without snickering about it, and I’m just not that guy.
I mean I’ve been there and I’m not that guy. I also am honestly relieved my dad is not in pain or confusing or fear any longer. I suspect one day the finality of it will hit me and I’ll be really sad and a little bit scared and when that happens I’m best off crawling to a corner and licking my paw. It’s how I do; people get sad and scared, we’re supposed to. We’re not supposed to on cue or when there’s an opening in the schedule, but we do that shit all the time; fear, pain, grief, love, joy, serenity, we’re a constant current of physical and emotional, um, currents.
Yikes. Still, no offense. I think folks who need grief counselors should have grief counselors. A quiet death in your sleep at 88 isn’t really my idea of grief though. Not to be all morbid and shit, but you know we are going to die, right? And yeah, I was expecting to go out in a hail of bullets on the mound at the old tiger stadium, ninth inning, bases loaded and I’m pitching 3-2 to a guy who’s post season average is .375 and it’s the seventh game of the world series and naked centerfolds are trying to protect me from the bullets the rabid yankee fans are --- I’m just saying, dying in my sleep at 88 would seem a bit anti-climatic, but I’m pretty sure it’s what my dad had in mind.
I’m not positive, but I think thewre’s a sort of grief that’s more self absorbed, I mean I think there’s a guy or two who grieves not getting that hail of bullets. I’ve certainly witnessed things that’ll haunt me longer and worse than seeing my fathers corpse in a hospital gown (that’s as stark and harsh as I can possibly make it, I mean I could describe the Spartan room, or the brilliant red cardnals in the bushs outside the window, but horror wise, well, it was less horrible than the sounds of dementia he was making before he went into the nursing home). It was all very gentile. And, again, I’m sure it’s going to catch up to me and go off into a corner and lick my paw.
I expected to outlive my dad, I expect to outlive my mom as well. If I lose a child or grandchild I think I’ll probably be beyond needing a grief counselor too. Without going into the seven course meal of it, the minute my first child came out of that sweaty hairy womb, I knew there was something that scared me more than, well, anything, but certainly more than my fathers death or my own. My dad is the first blood kin that I actually knew well to have passed; I think that’s what will sink in. I have buried --- people. And dogs. It’s harder with dogs. And … it’s harder with innocence.
Hmmmm, I’m still not doing this right. I meant to apologize for the last entry but not to hard. And I was serious about a bartender, and I know one of the noters knew that whether he had noted or not. All those little habit trails of our neural pathways? Those have been how humans work for an easy hundred thousand years, I mean we went crazy before shrinks, we got cancer before oncology, we communicated before cell phone, telephones, telegraphs, pony express, ink and papyrus, chisel and stone; it’s not really all that magical or it’s incredibly magical, and for me it’s always both though some days I lean further to one side or the other. Dying of old age is sad, losing the guy who raised you is sad, sad isn’t an emergency.
Oh, hey, that’s not a bad analogy, though I just meant it at face value. The last place in the world I want to be when I feel shitty, you know, pukey, dizzy, prickly, sympathetic bleedy from the hands and feets like all jesus stigmaty, is an Emergency room. I think if you’re gut shot or been in horrible accident an ER is ok, otherwise is just torture. That’s sort of how I feel about me seeing a grief counselor at this particular time. Even with a Gun shot, if it passed through without hitting anything vital, I’d rather lay down in the back of a car with a bottle of whiskey than an ER. Hell, rum would be ok.
My little sister is coming up end of the week. It might be different for her. It’s different for my mom. It’s not all that different though.
The silly thing I was serious about and I don’t have a less silly way of putting it is; What the fuck am I going to do next? What makes it a silly question is that I’m not much of a planner, what makes it serious is the whole what the fuck am I going to next part. I imagine I’ll figure it out. Those of you who haven’t been to a shrink before, that’s what they do --- make you figure it out. They aren’t a short cut or a GPS or, I dunno, a life coach, they are more like the scenic route and you still have to do all the heavy lifting, hmmm, mixed metaphors, yet another good reason for a bartender.
In the short term I know what to do next. End this entry.
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