Depressing time of year
Death and mourning. Depressing words.
This time of year has always been hard for me. I'm a spring and summertime person at heart. I love warm weather and being outside digging in the dirt, sweating and laboring over my plants and flowers, waiting for them to show their colors. I know that autumn can be a beautiful time with the changing of the leaves and that the holiday season is equally colorful with lights and ribbons and bows, but despite that, it always seems to depress me a little.
I understand that this year will be a difficult one for my family. This will be the year that we have all unhappily anticipated for the last thirteen years. This will be the first holiday season that we will be without daddy. Intellectually I understand that time goes on and that there will be many, many more that will not seem quite so sad. Emotionally... well, I guess it's obvious.
It will have been sixteen weeks tomorrow since I made the drive to the hospital and was asked to wait in a small cramped room for the doctor. Sixteen weeks since I walked into the hospital room where I had left my father a few hours before, alive and delirious with pain and medications, to find him cold and lifeless . Sixteen weeks since I gathered his belongings from the room as my mother sobbed over his body and a nurse stood guard at the door. Sixteen weeks since I last held his hand and said good-bye.
Most of the time I'm fine. Dad has never felt very far away, and I have felt a profound sense of relief for him since his passing. Most of the time. There are times when I least expect it, triggered by a song on the radio, or the smell of something that he used to fix, and whoosh! The pain of it all takes my breath away, leaving me disorientated and gasping while the world continues on around me uneffected. It is these times that it is hard, it is those times that I want to scream and beg for just a few more minutes.
If nothing else, I am my father's daughter. I will survive this holiday season and I will move on. I doubt I will enjoy it much though.
This time of year has always been hard for me. I'm a spring and summertime person at heart. I love warm weather and being outside digging in the dirt, sweating and laboring over my plants and flowers, waiting for them to show their colors. I know that autumn can be a beautiful time with the changing of the leaves and that the holiday season is equally colorful with lights and ribbons and bows, but despite that, it always seems to depress me a little.
I understand that this year will be a difficult one for my family. This will be the year that we have all unhappily anticipated for the last thirteen years. This will be the first holiday season that we will be without daddy. Intellectually I understand that time goes on and that there will be many, many more that will not seem quite so sad. Emotionally... well, I guess it's obvious.
It will have been sixteen weeks tomorrow since I made the drive to the hospital and was asked to wait in a small cramped room for the doctor. Sixteen weeks since I walked into the hospital room where I had left my father a few hours before, alive and delirious with pain and medications, to find him cold and lifeless . Sixteen weeks since I gathered his belongings from the room as my mother sobbed over his body and a nurse stood guard at the door. Sixteen weeks since I last held his hand and said good-bye.
Most of the time I'm fine. Dad has never felt very far away, and I have felt a profound sense of relief for him since his passing. Most of the time. There are times when I least expect it, triggered by a song on the radio, or the smell of something that he used to fix, and whoosh! The pain of it all takes my breath away, leaving me disorientated and gasping while the world continues on around me uneffected. It is these times that it is hard, it is those times that I want to scream and beg for just a few more minutes.
If nothing else, I am my father's daughter. I will survive this holiday season and I will move on. I doubt I will enjoy it much though.
posted by Andria @5:58 PM
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