Whoosh! That was the sound of me returning from another dimension. Things have been out-of-control crazy over here. On Tuesday night, my father-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 90 years old, and had lived an active and independent life until the very last day, but still... Losing a parent is hard. Really hard. And it's even harder when the remaining parent is also 90 years old and difficult, and they had absolutely no plans for their deaths, and they have no money and every bit of the responsibility falls on you. So Mr. SOC has had a tough go of it. And in addition to dealing with the viewing and the cremation and the memorial service and the military honors and writing the obituary and giving the eulogy, there have been family feuds and fights over money and reunions with long-lost siblings. And during all of this, Mia was sent home from school with a fever, so I've been pretty much out-of-commission taking care of her. Mix all that with Mr. SOC's childhood memories of his father (From his eulogy: "I remember the feel of his woolen overcoat that smelled of New York and smoke-filled train cars." Sob.) and wine-soaked ruminations on death. (It's inconceivable really, that you can be here one day shopping at Walmart and mooching the free coffee at the bank, and—BANG!—the next day you're a pile of ashes in a box on the mantle. For those of us left behind, death is the most incredible disappearing act. How can you be here, so solidly here, and then just... not be?) So anyway, we've been living in some kind of alternate universe for the past five days.
Then today, I thought Mr. SOC might finally get a day to relax, take a breath. But instead, he went to his parents' house and cleaned his dead father's filthy bathroom. And now he's at the emergency room with his son, who appears to have a bat bite on his arm. And we really don't want him to get rabies. But he got this bite a week ago, and hadn't mentioned it, so I hope to hell it's not too late to start the rabies treatment. It's all a bit surreal.
But the one benefit of all this is that, until Tuesday night, I was having a little personal breakdown, complete with feelings of hopelessness, etc. But this seems to have rocked me out of it. It was like a volcanic eruption that shifted my perceptions and forced me out of my self-centered downward spiral. So now, even though we are stressed and saddened and have a long road ahead of us figuring out how to deal with my mother-in-law, I somehow feel better than I did before it all started. I am not depressed anymore. I think maybe part of my problem has been this expectation that life is supposed to be fun. Every day is supposed to be fun, and anything that happens that is not fun causes me to panic, because I am losing out on the fun life I deserve. But sometimes, life is just hard, it's just putting one foot in front of the other, doing what you have to do and making it through. And it is so freeing to just let it be that.