Tag: death

Still here

Still here, being angry..

I’ve shared with a handful of co-workers at this point, and that ha scariest helped immensely. I’m still craggy and pissed off at regular life at school each day, but it helps, nonetheless.

I’ve started actually typing out a list of all the crap with which I have been dealing with my job this year, all the unfairness. I’ve reached out for contributions from my mom and husband, as well was a co-worker who has been there to hear it all and help me through a lot of it throughout the year so far. I think I’ll ask another coworker for his input, too, tomorrow. Then, once I’ve gathered all the points, I’ll put them in order and in a letter, and send a printed and a digital copy to the principal early next week, I guess. If I am granted the requested meeting with him sooner than that, then I will have it ready to hand him in that meeting. Whatever the case, my points will be communicated and documented, and I can move forward complete on it all, having been in clear communication.

Anyway, though I’m really relieved about that, I’m still utterly exhausted. All this emotion and all this lack of sleep has been especially tough this week.

And I really miss the dog. I miss the future we were living into, becoming a family of four. Now, we are a hopeful but woeful family of two. My husband is my dreams come true, of course. But the rest of this has been sacrificial suffering, without our understanding the ultimate goal of the suffering, which has made it al the harder.

Nonetheless, I am exhausted, and so I am going to sleep now. Getting closer and closer to being in bed when I truly want to be these days(!). So, yay for that(!). 9:30 lights out tonight.

Thank you, God, for the home and bed and husband. Amen.

Post-a-day 2024

La mort

Well, I got some sleep last night, but it don’t work out too well after I was informed that a chicken had wound up dead. And we don’t even know why. So, that’s sad. It wasn’t even the chicken who had been acting weirdly, like she might have been sick. It was one that had seemed totally fine. Again, so, that’s sad.

My man had found it before he went to bed for the night, and he told me later that he put it in a Target bag, then that in another Target bag, then that into a kitchen trash bag… and then he went and put it in a public trash bin somewhere nearby, so it would get picked up sooner than if it had gone into our trash bin, which doesn’t pick up for several days… anyway, it was weird to hear and to know. I guess all dying can be hard like that. It was also sad to lose that life. I liked that chicken. Sure, they’re somewhat unintelligent fat-like birds. But I still like them. And I am grateful for them for more than just the eggs they produce (though haven’t produced in a few days now). It’s just sad knowing that that life has ended.

Turns out that they have mites. That combined with the intense heat the past couple weeks or so plus the fact that they were drinking water from the AC drip likely is the combination reason why she died. I am hoping resolving the water source issue will help, as well as that all the work my man put in today to clean out the coop and having given the birds a sandbox that also has diatomaceous earth in it, and then the spray treatment for the coop tomorrow will help to clear of the mites issue and help to clear the struggle others may presently be facing with it all. They already got electrolyte stuff in their water today and will get some apple cider vinegar, too, soon.

God, help to heal our chickens, please. Amen.

And then there were seven.

Post-a-day 2023

Conversations, when overheard

Some conversations are best kept secret. But some conversations are well worth overhearing, especially the utterly absurd ones… because life is too short not to overhear the clever yet ridiculous stuff.

……

A couple is talking about how long they will be married in life, how many years they have left to live together.

Man: By then, life expectancy probably will be much higher. Or, even, they probably will have figured out how to put my head in a jar thing like in Futurama, stick it on a robot body, and let me walk around forever!

Woman, smirking and eyeing him: Honey, but I’m not with you for your brains…

Man: Well… they probably can cut off my penis and preserve that for you, too!

Woman, chuckling: And what would I do with that?! My head’ll be in a fish bowl, too!

Man: ….

Man [lightbulb strikes]: Put it in your mouth!!

Both laugh intensely.

Woman, nodding and laughing: Guess that could just float in the helmet with me…

Man: Exactly!

Woman: That was good… Well done, dear. Well done.

……

You’re welcome. Now you, too, have gotten to experience this stupidly clever conversation. 😛

Post-a-day 2023

And yet she died

I have prayed the rosary daily, and in dedication to her. I have given my love and my prayers so strongly to her as of late. Yet her earthly life has now ended. She is the late… Oh, for what shall I now pray? Everything feels so little compared to the blessing of her life…

God, help me to pray for whatever it is I need now to pray, especially with this daily rosary. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Mary, may you be praying for her now. I entrust her to your hands. Thank you for your love and your support, always. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Trust and passage

God, I am trusting you. Please, please, guide me that your will be done – let my will be yours – and I pray that I love pursuing it with all my heart. Guide me to be your love and light expressed through all that I am in this life. Give comfort and ease to my family members who have been in pain lately, please. Grant a fulfilling and peace-filled passage to C as she moves out of her earthly body, please – let her know what she needs to know to be free, please, and help her pass through and to you fully. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

(Same deal!)

Tonight

My Opa died this summer. At least, I think it was this summer… this whole year and a half+ has been difficult for me to separate into time periods beyond the bulk term “recently”.

Tomorrow is his wedding anniversary with my grandma, and my grandma’s 91st birthday. So, my mom and I are staying at their house tonight – despite the 78° thermostat in here, which is a big youch! – in preparation for a small gathering of family members tomorrow. This time, instead of celebrating with Thanksgiving, as we usually do with a two-day celebration, it is a whole week before our Thanksgiving gathering, and it is without my Opa.

And I don’t know how I feel about that.

I also don’t know how I feel about my having such uncertainty…

I think I stayed away more and more as he got close to dying, potentially out of self-preservation. It was hard to be with someone who was so close to death, who so soon would be gone permanently. But also who, more and more, was less himself, as though he was ever so slowly departing from this life, until just the final bit exhaled one early morning, and finished the departure.

Perhaps life is like that. Perhaps it is only a passing-through kind of deal, where we are born, and, from that moment, we begin slowly to depart, slowly to rise to our highest selves, returning to our core and our maker, returning to our home. And maybe some people are more in touch with that home than most, already with one foot in the door, so to speak. Perhaps they never fully left, or perhaps they quickly leaped back. And perhaps the ghosts we have walking these grounds are the ones who have lost their way, or who are just not yet ready to return home. Perhaps they are the ones who forgot that, like college, life is only a stepping stone, not a destination.

Obviously, I’m rambling off in an unexpected direction here. I’m still not ready to deal with Opa not being here in person with me anymore. He was already not really here for a while before he fully left. So, while it feels quite different, his not being in this house right now, I’m also accustomed to it, and even relieved by it, considering the struggles of his body shutting down over the final year or so of his life here.

Anyway… I want to love people the way I felt and sill feel loved by him. With him, I always felt worth it, and I always felt good enough. I always felt loved, just as I was. I want to do that for those in my life.

God, help me to do so, please.

Amen.

Post-a-day 2021

Tremble

O-o-o-oh, sometimes, it causes me to tremble…, tremble… tremble…

Perhaps one of the most powerful expressions of sadness and pain – an expression that communicates clearly to and elicits reaction from onlookers – is the unexpected tremble of the lips.

That powerful, easy, comfortable part of the body, somehow losing its ability just to hang out, hang around… it takes no effort for our lips just to exist. Perhaps that is what makes that tremble so powerful, so effecting… our pain is so great, that not even our effortless body parts can remain calm, they shake with the volume of such pain.

Post-a-day 2021

Mass

I did the second reading on Friday. My grandma’s cousin, the priest presiding over the Mass, had asked me to give a brief reason for and explanation of what I was going to do, just before I began. And so, with some trepidation, deep breathing, and many tears, I said, “My Opa’s first language was German. So, I will do the second reading in German, for him.” And then I did.

Der erste Brief an die Thessalonicher 
Das Schicksal der Verstorbenen
13 Brüder und Schwestern, wir wollen euch über die Entschlafenen nicht in Unkenntnis lassen, damit ihr nicht trauert wie die anderen, die keine Hoffnung haben. 
14 Denn wenn wir glauben, dass Jesus gestorben und auferstanden ist, so wird Gott die Entschlafenen durch Jesus in die Gemeinschaft mit ihm führen. 
15 Denn dies sagen wir euch nach einem Wort des Herrn: Wir, die Lebenden, die noch übrig sind bei der Ankunft des Herrn, werden den Entschlafenen nichts voraushaben. 
16 Denn der Herr selbst wird vom Himmel herabkommen, wenn der Befehl ergeht, der Erzengel ruft und die Posaune Gottes erschallt. Zuerst werden die in Christus Verstorbenen auferstehen; 
17 dann werden wir, die Lebenden, die noch übrig sind, zugleich mit ihnen auf den Wolken in die Luft entrückt zur Begegnung mit dem Herrn. Dann werden wir immer beim Herrn sein. 
18 Tröstet also einander mit diesen Worten!

Post-a-day 2021

Day one

The visitation and rosary and family hangout afterward all went really well this evening and tonight. I kind of only touched my emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum, and I feel like they might kind of explode outward tomorrow…, but I guess that’s okay. Hopefully, I’m able to make it through the reading reasonably well. I’ll be doing it in German, which was his first language and our extra special bond, just the two of us. So, I shared that I would like to do my reading in German, and print the English in the worship guide. It was approved with flying colors by the ones in charge. However, our cousin the priest, who’ll be saying Mass, told me to mention what I was doing and why I was doing it just before I began the German reading… that part might just be my emotional undoing…, so, we shall see on that part. Perhaps I’ll be so nervous about its being my first reading in a Mass, I won’t even notice the emotions that usually would arise for such a statement.

Anyway, at the family hangout tonight, after everyone had been eating a while, I went around and handed out the party favors, as I called them to myself. They were pains au chocolat, the French pastry that I usually call chocolatines, which is the name used in Southern France. As I passed them out to everyone, I said on repeat, “Because everything is better with chocolate, especially pain.”

Some of them got it immediately. Others took a few seconds or a couple minutes, and got it once they realized I was repeating the same phrase to everyone, which suggested something important in the message and word choice. A few definitely did not get it…, but they did like the pain au chocolat I offered to each of them.

(The irony, of course, is that I actually don’t like chocolate. I do love chocolatines, though [pain au chocolat]).

Post-a-day 2021