Monday, May 2, 2011

journal part 5

here we are nearing the end of this journal series and finally a break! (next and last entry of this series will be memorial day) i was telling my cousin the other day that i kind of regret starting this series...it is bad enough dealing with the way i feel now.. but here i am torturing myself with reliving the way i was feeling then...
this entry was written a couple of days before i went home for a few weeks...i was blessed to be able to spend his last birthday with him... i also got to spend a mother's say with my mom and her birthday too... this hadn't happened in too long
rereading this entry makes me think of the anticipation of his birthday..some of us wanted to have a big party.. invite everyone.. but my brother vetoed that idea... in the same way that he wasn't ready for me to come home.. he also wasn't ready to consider the possibility of it being his last birthday... i was constantly walking this fine line of staying logical and trying not to hide from what God had put in front of us... but also being positive for my brother who wiped all possibility of death from his mind.. he was stubborn in the way he chose to look in the opposite direction... this was the way he chose to cope till our papa's last day of life... what i tried to tell him in order to prepare him yet not burst the protective bubble he'd put around himself was that we were given a gift of sorts.. God was saying "hey look, it may be 30 days or 30 years, but one day i am taking him"... and we were so lucky to at least have that knowledge and cherish our 30 days or 30 years... this logic comforted me.. but would send my brother in a fit of furry... i changed my tactic after this trip home.. i adopted his positivity and hope.. for all of them..

4/31/2009

Dad,
i am trying to sort my feelings out today. i will be with you in 2 days. shouldn't i be excited? i want to feel excited, instead of scared or this nervousness that takes over. i am not sure why i feel this way but i think it could be that i am afraid that when i see you this inevitability will seem all too real. i won't be able to hide from it if i am standing face to face with you and what you have inside of you. i also think that i will have to face my control issues. here i feel helpless and frustrated that there is nothing that i can do, but i can rationalize by telling myself "if i was only there..." but once i get there i will have to deal with the reality that there really is nothing that i can do.
funny, i was talking to mom and she said (my brother) is not excited for me to come. that he is acting apprehensive. i know he is feeling the same way. i know that me coming home makes this too real for him. he also wants nothing but positivity and hope and he knows how my mind works. i am coming home armed to take him on! here we are feeling the same exact way but pretending not to be.
you sure did make some interesting kids dad. what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. we are strong, bull headed, overly opinionated and hot tempered. i wonder if you see that and although most of those traits are not great things, i hope you are proud of us anyway.

4 comments:

  1. I'm sure your dad is proud of you. I love reading these posts. Your "journal" posts have inspired me to post letters to Brittany that I had written and kept private.....thanks for sharing!!

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  2. thanks amanda... there is only one left.. thank God.. haha.. then i can start to focus on how i feel now... i am so proud of you for dealing with your loss.. no matter how long it took to come to terms with it! i can not wait to read your thoughts!

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  3. I can understand how you want to move past the journal posts, but they are an important part. This post really shows how family members cope and deal differently. Looking forward to reading how you feel now.

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  4. all of the entries i have posted except for the 5 from the journal series focus on how i feel now or felt on the day it was posted.. i only started to look back at how i felt then when i posted my paper journal letters in this series... i was/am ready to get past them but do completely understand the importance of coming full circle with my grief.

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