WOW WHEE! WHERE THE HECK HAVE I BEEN!

I have just been sort of preoccupied with life. This past year has been a lot of ups and downs through no fault of my own. Well, I guess I can blame myself in the sense that I had some rough times that I could have handled better. My father-in-law died in May and my mother died in September. My father-in-law had been in poor health for at least a couple years but my mother's only problem had been that she was starting to have more and more memory problems. Other than my annoyance at other people's behavior surrounding my father-in-law's death it didn't have any profound effect on me.

In contrast to my father-in-laws death, my mother's forgetfulness and subsequent death caused a lot of upheaval. Upheaval that I wish that I had handled differently because I feel as if it caused me to waste a lot of energy. Therefore causing six months of my life to be stressed. I really don't want to write about the details a whole lot mostly because it would mean reliving it and I'm done wasting my life on it....or at least I hope I am done. I will make a few brief points though.

The first thing that started all the stress was that because of her increasing forgetfulness there were people in the family that began discussing "what will we do if..." In a nutshell, my stress surrounded the fact that I felt that I would not and had no obligation to do anything. I felt my opinion put me on a very lonely island.

Although the family knew something was awry with my mother, her death was actually quite sudden. She died in her home without so much as one doctor visit. Hooray for her, what a way to go at 84 years old! I really didn't want to travel to NH to attend her funeral so I certainly didn't act appropriately when I was there. It's sort of ironic because I went only because I didn't want to look bad and cause stress in my family relationships. I would have done less damage by staying home.

The fallout from her funeral really stressed me out. Being judged for my uncaring attitude. Family scavenging through her belongings but then insinuating that I was scavenging as well. Me being quite surprised about the greed and wanting of others. Realizing certain relationships would change, one for the better but the rest for the worse.

Ultimately, it is now done. I've come full circle and feel that I am once again back to where I started. I am happy to be here and some might tell themselves that the journey helped them. I don't. As I said, only one relationship got better and I don't really think it was necessary to go through all that stress to get that relationship to that point. What I really learned from all this is that in order to protect myself emotionally, I need to be more cynical and less open with others. That part is going to continue to be hard for me.