Tag Archives: Grief

So Long, Ding Dong

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J.C. Schildbach

It’s the end that’s most difficult, but that’s where I need to start in order to process this all.  If you want the more amusing tales, without all that painful ‘closure stuff’, skip ahead to the “***” or just pass this one up.

It was like scheduling a good friend’s execution, all for the crime of growing old and getting sick.

Or at least that’s what it felt like this time.

With Joy (our first dog) it felt a lot more like an assisted suicide, a sacred act of mercy killing.  She had been on her way out for a long time and was finally at the point where, even though she seemed pretty damned aware of everything around her, she just wasn’t able to squeeze out any more life.  At the end, she just plain couldn’t get up off the kitchen floor and was done trying.  

Darby, a.k.a. Ding Dong (owing to Al Yankovich’s “Fat” video running on TV at some point on the day we brought him home – “Yo, Ding Dong, man, Ding Dong, Ding Dong, yo!”), who I had also been referring to as ‘Old Man’ for at least the better part of a year, due to his deteriorating physical and cognitive health, was spiritually (as M pointed out) as accepting as ever of everything happening around him, regardless of his level of awareness at any given moment.  It was nearly impossible to tell if anything was ever bothering him if it didn’t result in the kind of immediate, hostile reaction that was mostly reserved for those times anyone dared touch his paws.

When the lymphoma first started it was so pronounced and rapid that we assumed he’d captured another bee in his mouth, or perhaps a spider or some other stinging insect. I’d witnessed him chomping at bees before, and the swelling from his ‘successful’ efforts looked identical.  We gave him a small dose of Benadryl and the swelling went down within 24 hours, and, to our eyes, was essentially gone within 36.

And then his face swelled up again a few weeks later.  I was a bit surprised that he would have eaten another bee so soon.  Usually, a good mouth-stinging kept him from repeating that action until at least the next summer.  I tried to remember if he had ever done such a thing twice in such close succession.  But, with him seeming more and more distant lately, taken to long spells of standing and staring off into space, it didn’t seem all that odd that he would have taken another shot at tasting a bee.  It also occurred to me that I had purchased a new kind of ‘bone-broth-infused’ treat for him around the time of the first facial swelling.  And with the rotation of various meat sticks, breath fresheners, rawhide chews, meat-flavored joint medications, and all-natural general-bodily-grossness remedies that he was receiving on the semi-regular, it seemed this new treat might be the culprit.  

At any rate, the swelling was gone again within 36 hours, Darby seemed none the worse for wear, and I decided to shelve the suspect treats.

Then it happened again about a month later.  Only this time the swelling came up late in the day, and was gone by midday next.  In our heightened concern, though, we noticed things we hadn’t paid attention to before.  Perhaps they came up fairly suddenly, or perhaps over the course of a longer period, much the same way you don’t notice the slow changes in a friend’s appearance if you see them frequently, but if you’re apart for a long stretch, that same change can seem quite drastic.  

Darby’s eyes were more obviously clouded and rimmed with red, inflamed tissue.  Although his legs and neck still seemed muscular, his ribs, spine, and hipbones were much more pronounced.  And there were new developments: staggering while trying to stand up; clear difficulty navigating rooms, hallways, and stairs; and most alarming of all, the swelling in his face had morphed into two golf-ball sized, hardened nodules in his neck, just below the back of his jaw, only apparent through touch.

With a weak promise to take Darby to the vet on an upcoming day off, and a much stronger sense that any proposed cure would be worse torture than the disease, especially at his advanced age, Darby settled the issue in short order with what I will politely describe as some violent, disturbing, ‘productive’ coughing fits.

So I called the doggie death angels, the poochie euthanizers, the canine Kevorkians.

But seriously, folks, I can’t express how grateful I am for this service that allowed Darby to pass out of this existence lying in the shady grass of our back lawn, rather than in a sterile-but-stinky vet’s office, the smell of animal fear, anxiety, and mistrust (not to mention bodily waste) filling the air.

I wasn’t entirely sure Darby was ready to go if he’d been the one making the decision.  Shortly before the doc arrived, Darby decided he’d had enough of being outside and wanted to head back in—not frantically, but patiently standing by the back door, quietly trusting somebody would eventually open it for him, in contrast to his past behavior of barking at progressively shorter intervals until he was let in.  Still, it gave the impression of him trying to escape his fate.  It didn’t help that, even though he came back out to us on the lawn, he was standing, hoping for more treats from the doc, when he received the shot of sedative prior to the ‘final dose’, then staggered about and dropped, looking for all the world like Brandon Lee/Eric Draven in ‘The Crow’ when he’s lost his powers and taken a bullet – I half-expected him to mutter “Aw f*ck” on the way down. Only we caught him and helped him to the ground, his frailty and near-weightlessness in that moment a sharp contrast to his past strength and solidity.

For several nights after, I woke multiple times with a start, sensing an absence, wishing I had made a point of hugging him one last time, just so I would have that physical feeling to hang on to.  Ding Dong wasn’t much for being hugged, but he would tolerate it for a bit before mock-snapping at your face to get away, sort of like a teenage boy, embarrassed by parental displays of affection towards him.

That sense of absence was fraught with feelings of guilt.  Did I let go of him too early?  Did I act in haste?  If I had recognized the swelling for what it was earlier, would I have been able to get him help? Would he have even wanted that? Was this decision one of convenience more than what was best? 

Rationally speaking, I know we helped him to avoid extra days, or perhaps weeks, of suffering, even though it was tempting to imagine him lying out in the grass in the sunshine, passing away quietly and content, in spite of how unlikely such an end was. Still, it was the polar opposite of the ‘mistake’ we made with Joy, waiting until the end was entirely inevitable, and then having to wait extra days to get somebody to come out to the house to help with the exit. With the desire to avoid a delay in getting the lethal injection figuring into our calculations with Darby, it was too easy to think we’d panicked, especially since there were multiple appointments available on the chosen day and the day after. I didn’t ask about anything beyond. It’s a maddening equation, trying to figure out just when your friend should die in order to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.

***

When people asked about Darby’s breed, I always said he was a mutant. In truth he was a pit bull mixed with something – the shelter had somewhat arbitrarily paired his pit bull side with an Australian shepherd, although I didn’t really see the Aussie in him. At any rate, it’s more fun to think of him as a mutant in the X-men sort of way, or perhaps a damaged survivor in a post-apocalyptic hellscape than to imagine him something of a runt who may not have survived if he were born in the wild. His were adaptations, not deformities. 

Darby’s right “pinky toe” was set back from his other right forepaw toes, and high enough that it never touched the ground while he was standing.  Since he would try to murder anyone who touched his paws, he perpetually had a vicious-looking, hooked claw, perhaps equal to the task, growing from it. I think the kid managed to trim his nails all of once in Darby’s entire lifetime, nearly at the cost of the railing by the stairs that she had attached his leash to in order to keep him from fleeing.  

On a trip to the veterinarian, I asked if I could get Darby’s nails trimmed. The vet asked me to have a seat in the waiting room while he took care of it. After a loud volley of barking, combined with some pained groaning from the vet, Darby emerged from the examination room with a big smile on his face, and one brutally short and bleeding nail, the remainder of them still exactly as they had been, the vet refusing to ever attempt that again unless Darby was sedated. In addition to attempting to murder the vet, Darby had emptied his bowels and bladder while standing on the metal exam table.

Darby’s eyelids were ‘inverted’, meaning he had to have surgery to remove a portion of them in order to prevent his eyelashes from perpetually scratching the surface of his eyes, resulting in him having no eyelashes at all.  And he had a misaligned jaw, preventing him from having the trademark vicious clamping ability that causes people to so fear pit bull terriers.  That misaligned jaw also meant that he was perpetually drooling out of the right side of his mouth, which was somehow funnily endearing when it wasn’t totally gross.

When he first moved in with us, it was that malformed jaw, perhaps in accord with the absence of a vicious killer instinct (nail trimming attempts notwithstanding), that spared a number of my neighbor, Ruth’s chickens. For days after his arrival, Darby, like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, spent a fair amount of his outdoor time looking for weaknesses in the fence surrounding our backyard.  Arguably, the target points weren’t all that hard to spot.  The fence was old, decaying, and one of Ruth’s many pine trees had fallen onto our property during a storm less than a year after we moved in.  So, in addition to various “naturally occurring” gaps and soft spots, some large portions of the fence had essentially been obliterated and patched up with whatever was handy at the time, from cast-off basement wood paneling, to spare bits of chain-link fence, to various bungee cords, spare 2x4s, rope and felled branches.  Darby spent each trip to the backyard exploiting these weaknesses while we attempted to shore them up, one by one, as he found them.

When he did find a flaw big enough to exploit, he was off.  Fortunately, there is a reasonably functional gate between our backyard and Ruth’s backyard, or it could have been a disaster making the long trip all the way around multiple houses to reach the front of Ruth’s massive property where we would have otherwise had to enter.  Instead, we were able to pull the gate open, being careful not to collapse the surrounding fence, as we set off to retrieve Darby in his pursuit of chickens.  

Now, Darby could be exceptionally clever and fast.  Between finding the desired gap and making use of it, he was deceptively nonchalant, looking simply like he was choosing an appropriate place to relieve himself, when really he was figuring out just how fluid he had to make himself to get through that gap, and how best to make that happen.  One minute he was peeing, the next minute he was bolting.  And he caught Ruth’s chickens more than once, tearing around her yard, as the chickens squawked and fled, Darby constantly changing his targeting, until, like the problem areas of the fence, he found a vulnerable hen.

On those occasions when he managed to secure a barnyard fowl in his jaw, it was never all that secure. He would snag it, run a few more paces, toss it aside, then come back to me, smiling and wagging his tail and tongue, satisfied that he had proven his usefulness, one of Ruth’s poor girls left stunned and shaken (but not shaken too hard), hopefully happy to go on living another day.

Darby soon tired of busting out of the backyard and running down chickens he had no intention of actually capturing, and settled in with everyday life.  While he seemed like a big goof, he frequently ran schemes like pretending to want the affection of one of the humans in the house, all in a bid to get his big sister, Joy, to vacate a choice spot and come over to try and displace him in his bid for attention.  Once Joy had diverted all the scritches and rubs, Darby would trot off and install himself in the pre-warmed chair Joy had just left.

I’ll admit I never realized just how helpful Darby was around the house until a few days after he was gone.  He was the first line of defense against dropped food…food of any kind on any floor or dog-friendly furniture.  We had become incredible slobs, taking essentially no notice of any food we let go or spilled, knowing Ding Dong would come along and, aside from a small number of items he was not particularly fond of, horf it up. Within a week after his death, M was finally considering hiring (as I had been suggesting for years) someone to clean our house at least once every couple weeks or so.

If you read the first section of this post, you might wonder at my casual attitude toward Darby’s swollen face in his final days and his propensity to eat odd things.  We have a fantastic, framed picture our friend Lisa took of Darby on a multi-family vacation years ago, as he watched sparks pop off of logs in a campfire, trying to catch them in his mouth.  In the photo, he stares intently at the fire pit, waiting with heightened focus for another cluster of orange cinders to blast off in all directions.  If you didn’t know what was actually happening in the photo, you might mistake Darby for trying to unlock the secret of fire, as opposed to waiting for a mildly painful, probably wholly unsatisfying snack.

Darby may also have been some barometer of the supernatural, or perhaps just the dog equivalent of a human with long-term, low-level psychosis. He frequently stood at various random locations around the house barking. Sometimes this was readily attributable to light reflections on the walls or ceilings that he was clearly tracking, but other times it made much less discernible sense. Often, it involved him refusing to enter rooms or move from one space to another, occasionally while growling and/or taking a ‘fight or flight’ posture. 

I’m not a big believer in the supernatural, but g*ddamn if Ding Dong didn’t actually freak me out sometimes with his insistence that something was wrong. And g*ddamn if I’m not at least marginally sure a lot of that behavior of his didn’t stop around the same time I ‘felt’ the original (and only previous) owner of our home “move on” many years after we all moved in. But I’ll just plop that in the ‘Cosmic Web of Coincidence’ file for now rather than trying to parse out just what I mean by all that.  I will say, though, that Darby demonstrated a decided return to this behavior, minus the fearful parts, over his last few months.

I could go on with stories about Darby’s various charms and peccadilloes, although I think I’ve covered most of the ‘bigger’ ones. Darby was never a particularly difficult, destructive, or demanding dog, beyond his toenail issues and a propensity to enjoy being loud when he was having fun. 

But for the most part, he was just a relaxed, grounding presence in our lives, sort of a Zen pit bull (mix). So now, at the end, I’ll say about Darby what I hope can be said about me when I’m being memorialized, which, with any luck, will be very far in the future: he was a good dude – a little weird – but a good dude.

So long, Ding Dong.

Peace out, Joy

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JC Schildbach

The kid and I had been making offhand comments about putting Joy down for so long, that once I actually made the call to have it done, I was caught off guard by the flood of emotion a few minutes later.  I went through the call pretty much like a straightforward business matter: What’s the cost? What’s the soonest you can send someone out?

But when I went to relay the information to M, I made it through the date and time no problem, then choked up when I tried to explain the cremation options.  I paused long enough for M to ask “Are you ok?”

I meant to say, “Not really,” but all that came out was a squeak of a “no” followed by me closing my eyes in a vain effort to stop any tears from escaping.  The cremation options discussion would have to wait until later.  I was heading out to Costco.

To back up a bit, the kid and I had been making offhand comments about putting Joy down for quite some time, because Joy was clearly getting weaker and struggling with pain issues, not to mention breathing heavily after just minor physical exertion. For close to a year, we’d had had to coax her outside by offering a treat – and by ‘coax her outside’, I mean we had to bribe her just to get her to stand up.  She would occasionally, of her own free will, get up and move to a different location, usually to be with M or to move to a cooler or more comfortable location.

On multiple occasions, we had tried to springboard these comments into actual discussions of why it would be beneficial for Joy to ‘move on.’ But M wasn’t having any of it. She could see that Joy was still alert, and appeared at least reasonably happy much of the time. Joy spent most of her time asleep—and usually only screamed and cried for a few minutes when trying to get up from a long rest, or in the middle of just about any TV program or movie we were trying to watch.  We were able to manage her pain, for the most part, with OTC CBD.

The turning point in the whole situation came when M and I returned from a weekend trip.  The kid had texted us the day before that Joy had cried/screamed for almost four hours straight on Saturday. On our arrival home Sunday night, Joy made her way to the top of the stairs to greet us, and there she stayed for hours, occasionally bursting into loud crying jags.  I used a sling to try to help her get up and move, but that only led to more crying, and some awkward escape attempts that propelled her into furniture or far afield from any destination we might have been aiming for.  She eventually struggled her way into the kitchen and slurped up as much water as she could.

Joy would stay in that same basic spot for her remaining hours.

Joy lying down

Joy: 10/15/2004 – 9/24/2019

I stayed up late, attempting to read and write, and not making much headway on either project—frequently reverting back to screwing around online. Joy woke up every so often, engaging in loud crying jags. I couldn’t get her to get up and go out, and the CBD-filled treats I was feeding her clearly weren’t getting the job done, aside from making her comfortable and sleepy enough to go down for a half-hour or so at a time.

I eventually started researching in-home euthanasia for dogs. Being as it was the middle of the night, and I didn’t imagine we’d have much luck moving Joy to the car and getting her to a 24-hour vet, I was hoping to find some humane, in-home method we could legally administer ourselves. Virtually every article that mentioned some way or other to euthanize a dog (beyond the ‘call an in-home service’ or ‘take your dog to her/his regular vet’) urged readers to ‘check local ordinances’ – which, of course meant, ‘this is probably illegal where you live, so good luck.’ The same basic warnings went along with the idea of burying your dog on your property.

Around 2:00 a.m., Joy started crying again, and was clearly struggling with trying to get up on the slippery kitchen floor.  I helped her onto the living room carpet, where she generally has an easier time getting up, only to have the struggle continue, culminating in the realization that she was trying to get up and go outside to relieve herself…in a big way. I cleaned and cleaned while Joy’s breathing went through a variety of odd stages…mostly very rapid and shallow, with brief periods of gasping for air, or settling in to long, labored, moaning breaths.

Convinced Joy was on her way out, I went to wake up M, who, in turn, woke up the kid.  We all gathered by Joy, now back on the kitchen floor, along with our other two dogs, Darby and Bobby, who were clearly frightened by whatever was going on, and tried to keep their distance.  Roughly 45 minutes passed with us all expecting some final death rattle and exit.  Instead, Joy’s breathing returned to it’s relatively normal-but-labored state and she seemed to say ‘thanks for your concern, but I’m gonna be around a while longer.’

We all went to bed, or back to bed in everybody’s case but mine.  It was 4:00 a.m.

Four hours later, I was startled awake by Joy’s crying, somewhat confused Joy was still alive. I’d been – well, I wouldn’t say hoping—but thinking she would have passed in the night after the display we’d witnessed. I rolled out of bed and headed upstairs, where M was on the couch watching videos on her laptop.  Joy was right where she’d been hours before. M told me she had called out from work, also thinking Joy would pass.

I went back to bed for a few more hours, occasionally being wakened by Joy’s cries. Eventually, I called our vet’s office. They gave us contact info for a few in-home dog euthanasia services. Ever the smart shopper, I called the first number they gave me and booked an appointment, jotting down names and prices without giving much thought to whether it was a good, or even reasonable deal, or if it was normal to have to give 24 hours notice to have your dog put down.  Given the number of dog owners in the region, I have no doubt that these services are probably booked all the time, and 24 hours hardly seemed a stretch.  I set up the appointment for the latest available time the following night, unsure of what the kid’s schedule was, or if M was planning to go to work or not (I was on my usual days off, in addition to having taken vacation days, in no way anticipating that this is how I would be spending my time away from the office).

Our ‘euthanizer’, Dr. Audrey, was, perhaps younger than we expected…but, really, not having done this before, I didn’t know what to expect. Wearing a pony tail, a light-beige sweater, and deep-red pants with an autumn-colored leaf pattern, she seemed a pleasantly non-threatening angel-of-doggy-death.

Just prior to her arrival, I was getting frustrated with the pressure cooker not allowing me to set the cooking time appropriately for a corned-beef brisket, and continued in my button-poking while Dr. Audrey gently eased M into accepting Joy’s passing. I eventually dug out the operating manual for the pressure cooker, set the damn thing as best I could, and got down on the kitchen floor with Joy, M, and Dr. Audrey.  The kid, Darby, and Bobby all kept a bit of sorrowed distance.

When it was all over and Dr. Audrey had taken the body away (we opted for the private cremation where we would get the ashes back, the kid offering to design and build a special urn), we toasted Joy with martinis, and sat in the living room comforting our remaining dogs and each other with tales of Joy’s antics….among my favorites…

On the way home from the shelter where we got Joy, she repeatedly kept climbing into my lap until I just decided it was (slightly) less dangerous to drive with her in my lap than to try to fight her off again and again. On arriving home, she didn’t leave my side for nearly two weeks (I was working out of our home then), except for one escape attempt, where she took off down the road for several blocks, constantly looking back over her shoulder to make sure I was still following.  When I stopped, she apparently decided it was better to come back than to keep going…

Prior to bringing her home, we were thinking of different names for Joy, since Joy was not (as far as we knew) her actual name from before she arrived at the shelter.  However, because our landlord left town for several days after telling us it was ok to have a dog at the house, and the shelter couldn’t reach him for almost a week, we got used to calling her Joy while visiting her daily, waiting for the shelter to confirm it was ok for us to take her home.

We bought a house a few years after getting Joy, and realized that on July 4th, we could see all kinds of fireworks around the region from our roof. Not a big fan of explosions, Joy, not wanting to be alone, climbed up a ladder onto the roof to join us in watching the fireworks (I had a picture of M, the kid, and Joy sitting on the roof, but can’t find it – not sure if it was digitally wiped out in a computer incident, or what). Getting Joy back off the roof was not an easy task, and I’m surprised neither she nor I were injured at all in the process.

Joy was a champion tennis-ball fetcher.  She would make insane, twisting leaps into the air to catch a ball.  She especially loved chasing them into the water and swimming back with them, just to get us to throw them as far away as possible, over and over.

Joy waiting for a throw

Joy — waiting at Lake Cushman — ‘you think you jackasses could stop the jibber jabber and maybe throw a ball?’

One time, we had gone out to dinner, leaving Joy at home alone.  On returning, she was standing on the kitchen table, eating an almost full stick of butter. Rather than leaping away to pretend she wasn’t doing such a thing, she stood her ground, rushing to finish the butter before we could get to her.

I won’t go on about all the times Joy bit or nipped people out of some misguided sense of a need to protect her pack, or growled and whined and barked at people over at our house.  If you were here, you know exactly what I’m talking about and how loud and aggravating it could be. It was a fear behavior we never managed to cure her of.

Still, she was (mostly) a good dog.  She was the first dog all three of us ever had as our own. We loved her, and we’ll miss her.

Peace out, Joy.  See you when we see you. Just know you’re still here with us forever.

 

 

GRIEF, AMERICAN STYLE, or, I’m gonna sit here and drink until I hear “Raining Blood” so f*ck you!

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I’ve lived through a few Facebook funerals now, where somebody I’m connected to via Facebook, but haven’t seen for years…decades even…dies and the news is relayed on their page and often numerous others’ pages.  Or the news intrudes on completely unrelated posts as the awkward grief styles of the American public become all the more public.  I don’t think the American people in general deal with grief well, and my own personal grieving style tends toward an above-average level of avoidance and, uh, blockage.

I’m trying not to go there right now—to the awkward social media grief, or the blockage—even as I’m posting in a social media outlet.  But a friend of mine really did die last week, (and the post I was working on about swearing therapists decided to punch me in the brain, preventing me from working on it).  In some sort of weird and possibly misguided effort to maintain some level of privacy, I’m not going to name my friend here, although not naming him seems sort of like denying any kind of tribute as well as making this post that much more about me me me.

I will say he was a kick-ass guy with a wonderful wife and kids, as well as numerous other beautiful (in the drunk, ‘you’re my best friend!’ style) family members and friends.  I can’t say as I knew him well enough to give even a marginally adequate sketch of his life, but then there are very few people, even some of my siblings, for whom I could provide such a thing.  I have my own small store of personal recollections and connections, which I’m just not going to share here.  But we’ve been down too long in the midnight sea anyway.

I don’t know if keeping his name out of this would be considered a positive or a negative, because I just don’t know how these things work anymore.  Anymore?  Who am I kidding?  Even before “social media” existed, I didn’t know what to do with the various real-world aspects of grief.  Do I call the family?  Do I leave the family alone?  Do I show up on the family’s doorstep, sobbing, Crock-Pot full of chili and bouquet of sunflowers in hand?  What about donations to charities, the family, or…?

As much as we say the grief is about the deceased, ultimately, grief often comes down to “me me me,” especially for those of us who don’t know how to “do grief” or do the funereal etiquette properly.  We can become obsessed with how the death of someone impacts us, and how we are supposed to act in the face of it.   We can become obsessed with whether we are doing the right thing or not, even when nobody is paying all that much attention to us.  I can’t imagine that anybody is sitting around complaining that I have not made it clear that I am aware of his death, or what I intend to do about it.  I’ll show up for the funeral and work that all out there, or in the days after, or…

Me, I don’t do grief well at all.

Yeah, I’m a therapist, and I have completely inadequate training in dealing with death, and more importantly, the living left behind…perhaps all by design.  It’s not my thing.  It’s not anything I’m comfortable with…not that I should be allowed to claim the privilege of comfort at this point in time.  I truly love this man, and his family, and f*ck me if I know what to do with that.

So let’s change gears.  Here’s a little example of how I function in these situations:  Following a memorial service a few years back, I was somewhat mortified when my grief fog began to lift and I realized I’d been wandering around, a forced smile on my face, at seeing people I hadn’t seen in far too long.  The awkwardness of, “Hey, good to see you,” collided with, and perhaps overrode the awkwardness of, “One of our friends/family members died.”  It’s a fine line between grief and panic…grief and meltdown…grief and straight-up weirdness(?).

It seems like grief is one of those things I should have learned or maybe just known, like you’re supposed to know how to change a tire or unclog a toilet (or how you’re supposed to know all those stupid things that are supposed to be part of a wedding).  But I’ve largely managed to avoid engaging my grief skills, in favor of engaging my grief avoidance skills.  My father died when I was still too young to really understand what that meant.  And almost nobody else I know who died since then was really all that close to me when they went, either due to time and distance, or due to design.

I distinctly remember, back in the summer of my 11th year (was it my 11th?  Maybe it’s not so distinct) when my favorite uncle died.  Due to his prolonged illness, I had intellectualized his passing, had closed myself off from having to feel much of anything.  I didn’t want the hurt, so I wasn’t going to have it.  When my mom got the call, I sat on the couch between my younger brother and older sister as the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” played on vinyl, pushing my mind into that song.  My uncle was gone.  I knew he was going well before he left.  “Something inside, that was always denied, for so many years…”

I will also say that in many instances, I kept my distance, which was usually just a matter of carrying the relationships on as usual.  I guess my attachment issues lead me to downplay relationships, to where connections most anyone else would call friendships feel more like acquaintanceships to me.

And perhaps even worse, my instinct to dull the pain often leads to making jokes, usually sarcastic comments, realizing only after I’ve begun unleashing them that I am saying things that are horrifically inappropriate.  I want to imagine myself, like Superman, realizing a missile has been launched, taking off to steer that missile out into space.  Only, like Superman and the missile, I end up blowing up the Phantom Zone instead, unleashing General Zod, Ursa, and Non, ultimately raining much more hell down on everyone, myself included, than I would have if I’d learned to keep my mouth shut, or to make appropriately staid comments.

I’ll say that right now, I’m trying to do this right.  I’m trying to let myself take this in, even as I am engaging in various forms of avoidance.  I can’t promise that I won’t just crawl inside a bottle for a few days, and then drag myself out, emotions appropriately muddled and washed downstream.  But I’m gonna try to feel this one for real, dammit.