“So it goes”
The year anniversary has come and gone. I was too deep in my grief and the need to be alone and not think that I didn’t post anything. Not on her birthday, not on the Sunday it all started, not the blackest day or the day that was supposed to memorialize someone who meant so much to me. I took two weeks off from work, so I could keep to myself and be how I needed to be without the judgement. Before I went on vacation, which put me off work for a total of 3 total weeks, I had my performance evaluation. It was a good review. Up until I read that I was being judged on my grieving. I need to work on getting along with others. I apparently wasn’t getting along well with others. the reason why? I was grieving. I again wasn’t the old “Ann” that my boss knew and recognized. I didn’t chit chat with people anymore. I didn’t stop and bond with our finance department, who are some of my favorite people here, spending probably too much time down in their office than I probably should have ever done. Instead, I sit at my desk and work. I helped out where I needed to help and for the most part, my job keeps me at my desk. Yes, before, I would move about the building. Not only to chat with my “friends” and friends but to get my steps in, get my stairs in. I had made such great progress in my weight loss journey and didn’t go the hour with out getting up moving around. That, along with my social skills, have went to the wayside. When my boss read that to me, as I read it… I felt myself completely shut down. I wonder if he saw it too? Did he see the fake smile slide to a frown? I don’t mind being reprimanded and am usually the first to point out my flaws and mistakes and errors. I could see something being said about what had happened with the group I was sitting with before. That would make sense. I had told him that I would take a write up… I would have taken that on my review but not getting along with others. Not at all. I was still getting along with everyone. I would say Hi and smile but I wasn’t overtly friendly as I had been before. I never was mean or rude to anyone.
It didn’t hit me until my good friend stopped by and chatted with me the second week I was off. She made me realize that people truly do not understand bereavement and because it can cause some to become uncomfortable, many don’t really want to try. She said that people also don’t realize the relationship I had with my mom and she said that I was grieving more like a parent who lost their child, than a daughter who had lost her mom. She urged me to get with a bereavement group, which I will, one day. She also felt it might be a good idea to find another job, which I have started looking for. I may stay here and go back to school… I’m not sure. I feel I digressed a little from where I thought this blog was going to go and I’m sorry for that…
It’s been a year. I’m still in shock and disbelief that this has happened. That I have let this happen. I have never felt so alone. I have no one. I have my friend but she has her daughter and things she knows she is going to do with her life. I have a sister here but she and I have never been close and I struggle with my anger towards her due to how she treated my mom for so many years. I have sisters that live out of state but again, I struggle with the choices they made when they left – we all stopped talking and my mom had only recently started talking with one of them again. I didn’t talk with them until my mom died and now only speak to the one my mom had reestablished her relationship with; lets call her “Leigh”. The other whom we will call “Jane”… I don’t speak to and probably never will again. I know that with my mom dying that I should let everything that has happened in the past stay there but just like my sister here whom we will call “Nicole”, I can’t get past how “Jane” treated my mom so I don’t count on them at all. My brother now lives with me. He is developmentally delayed so there are so many challenges that are coming with that. Those challenges and trying to take care of a 34 year old man who is mentally maybe 10 keep me getting up in the morning along with the cats and chickens. If I didn’t have those things, if I didn’t have the guilt of leaving my brother behind, leaving all the cats behind to end up homeless and without anyone to care for them… I would have probably would have ended my life as soon as my moms life was over. I remember holding on to her body at the viewing, begging to whomever is in charge to take me too. I wanted to die so our ashes could be mixed together. So I could be with her for forever. I still think of it every day. Beg to the powers that be to just take me in whatever way they see fit. But, maybe one day, things would be simplified and I could just slip away and be with my mom again. That’s all I want. To have her to talk to.