Ugh

I don't know if a day goes by that I don't relive some bit of mom's last week in my head.  I think about the last time she held Jake.  And I think about seeing her after she'd been told the news, already a bit doped on morphine.  And I think about her receiving last rights and then her daily deterioration.  How horrible to watch one of the most important people to me go that way.  To see her eyes go blurry with non-recognition morphine/fever haze.  To her scary breathing the day she died.  To know that though she was still breathing, she wasn't there.  I see it over and over.  I hate thinking of her this way.  Yet I know that if I wasn't there for her, I'd be saying how I'm so mad for not being there.  It's a no win situation.  I wanted to be there to support my mom and let her know how much I love her, but I'm so traumatized by it.  I say maybe just going in the blink of an eye is the way to go, so noone has to see you like that.  But then, she got to say goodbye.  I don't know if either is better, really.  But I do know that reliving those days is awful.  I don't want to remember like that and I really want that to be behind me and the thinking of her as the beautiful amazing person she was to begin.

And now my best friend has had to say goodbye to her life partner in much the same way.  I've not talked to her yet as he passed yesterday but I know he was in the hospital for a couple days and the doctors had said he wasn't going to survive.  So she did have to deal with the saying goodbye and watching that amazing life slip away from her, just as my family did.  What a thing to have to have in common with your best friend when we're only 34!  And Stan was just so great, and so great for Kim.  He loved her SO much and my heart is breaking for what she is going through because now I know how it feels.  I'm just so overcome with how shit this is and how hard it is to grieve for Stan and for her when I'm still so affected with the grief in my life. 

And then life goes on.  And we keep on going on.  And my cousin Joe becomes a daddy.  And my choir member will soon become a mommy.  But the pain is still there.  And I go back and forth with my pain for Kim and my pain for me.