Wednesday of this week she was so weak she needed to be intubated to be able to breathe and then eventually paralyzed and heavily sedated while being pumped with so many different fluids and medicines. By the time I got there with my mother and twin yesterday, she no longer looked like herself at all. We had planned to be there for only a few hours, but it turned into spending the whole day in the hospital, intermittently crying and laughing as the family reminisced and clung to any hope that she was going to pull through.
I wanted to stay, I didn't want to leave, but my twin had work today, and I needed to continue studying... It feels so fucking ridiculous to be worried about a test when my cousins just lost their mom and it was impossible to focus on finishing my practice exam after my mother got the word that my Aunt had indeed passed. I felt so guilty yesterday when I had the thought that I hope the funeral doesn't coincide with the day of my exam. When I voiced this to my sister as we sat at the base of a giant Jesus statue she told me not to do that to myself, that life still goes on. It would be so nice if we could hit pause when shit falls apart, but we cannot.
My cousin just kept saying how much she wished she could have one more conversation with her Mom and I can't even bare to let myself try to imagine what that feels like. This week started off with a good friend's mental health imploding and at the moment it is unclear when they will regain clarity. Even if it isn't death, sometimes it's illness, or other life circumstances, but you just never really know when the last time with someone you care about, where you can say how you feel and they will understand or be receptive to it, will truly be.
With work still being too busy and stressful, these horrific tragedies to people close to me and this damn test next week, I've wished more than ever I had someone to come home to. Someone to tell me it's all going to be ok. It's a bummer when you have good news and want to share it with a person who is no longer in your life, but it just adds to the devastation when you realize their arms are what your tired sad frame craves.
It was hard to get up today, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and I can't even imagine how my cousins feel, or my dad and his siblings, or my sister, who lives close to my cousin and has truly been a rock star since my Aunt was moved to Maryland. When I finally got up and decided to make myself food I kept remembering how the technicians last night at the hospital told us stories about my Aunt just craving pizza. I decided I'd make a pizza with my mother's favorite toppings, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. It felt productive to make myself a meal, and as I cried while I chopped the veggies, it felt like a homage to my Aunt.
I saw this saying about grief that I can't remember all of, but the gist was that grief is just all the love you still have to give that no longer has its desired destination. So in essence the deepness of your pain is just how much you truly loved them and in some sense you can choose to also be in awe of just how lucky you were to have loved that deeply.
