Coming out of anesthesia
What my grief is feeling like right now
Last year I got my appendix out- right on my birthday. I went to bed with a stomachache that I assumed were gas pains and woke up in the middle of the night with the worst stomachache I’d ever had. Jason and I called the nurse hotline who suggested we head to the ER. The moment of deciding whether or not to heed the nurse’s advice was brief and off we went. All in all, I was in and out of the hospital in 12 hours. I went home groggy, relieved, and surprised. Emergency appendectomy! On my birthday! The nurses and doctors were so nice.
I remember needing to be cautious with my body in the hours and days after surgery. My stomach was bloated from the air they pumped into it during the laparoscopy, and I had three new one-inch incisions on the left side of my stomach. The physical pain was not so bad; what I remember most is the alert slowness with which I had to move. Getting up out of bed and thinking through the movements, “Okay and we’re getting out of bed, is this uncomfortable for my incisions?”. I shuffled slowly around Jason’s apartment and would take my time pouring hot water from the kettle and asking, “Is this requiring too much energy to lift this kettle?” I moved with an awareness that something invasive, necessary, and out of my control had just happened to me. This is what my grief feels like these days. Foggy, slow, something big has happened. Of course, my mother is not my appendix (an unnecesarry little pouch). I won’t even both going into the differences between them, I know you understand. What I’m getting at here is that I am surprised by the physicality of her passing, and that sadness is not the overarching feeling. It’s a void. It’s an awareness that something massive has changed, taken place. It is raw. Is it shock? Grief right now feels like an anesthesia that is slowly wearing off. I am taking it one day at a time.
My mom watched Selling Sunsets. She called it depraved and watched every season. Last night I started the latest season and watched as one of the cast-members discovered life changing news. I was overwhelmed by a desire to text my mom about this news and then burst into tears. I want to know my mom’s current thoughts about this inane show. I started to laugh hard at the fact that I was sobbing to this show. This is also what grief feels like right now.
What else?
Do you have one of these candle carousels? I want one with Christmas trees…Looking for charm and softness as I head into the holiday season. Do you think we could make one?
Currently scouring Noishaf Bazaar, Postmark, The RealReal, and Depop for a pair of these. Will report back on the differences between grief dressing and pandemic dressing.
Listening to this song on repeat: