Over the past month, my grief and resulting depression has been overwhelming. I keep tons of notes in my phone and I tried to record some of these moments. I had writer’s block as a result of the hole I’ve been in.
April 9: It’s 11:30pm and my anxiety is making me nauseous. Is grief going to follow me like a shadow forever? I have to keep going on like this with a hole in my chest?
April 11:
One of several things I have come to struggle with lately is the concept of taking up space. The fear at my core is that if I open the floodgates, these feelings will swallow me whole. My best friends tell me to be as big and loud with my feelings as I need to be, so naturally I’m bottling up and making myself as small as possible. Please don’t:
Tell me you feel sorry for me
Ask me how I’m doing
Tell me what to do
Perceive me
April 17:
Reading at night these days either keeps me up so I can find out how it ends (300 pages in the way or not) or soothes me to go to sleep. It’s almost unpredictable. Mom recently got back into reading in the year or two before she passed. She was in a book club. Growing up she said reading always put her to sleep. I think part of the problem was being too busy to slow down to read too.
I read 3 books last week. This week I can’t focus on the one I was so excited to get a special edition of on release day. Nothing else sounds good or I’m on a hold list with the library. That hold button in Libby is mocking me at this point.
I’m doing better this week. Week to week is always different. Last week I think I read so much because I wanted to escape my sadness. This week I’m playing catch up at work after my executive dysfunction week last week. It’s overwhelming but someone told me I was on fire with my support requests, so that feels better.
Mom’s church (and mine too I guess) is dedicating a bench in her honor on Mother’s Day. It’s going in their green space. Dad said that’s probably the last thing we have to do for her. Is this what I’m fighting with mentally? Will there be some kind of acceptance that comes with this?
April 18:
I read and read and read how to make sense of myself. I’ll research anything into the ground. I’ve been told I am likely experiencing complex ptsd. I went through a traumatic loss and I have to remind myself of that. Grief when coupled with C-PTSD leads to an enduring process. Supposedly the next step in the grieving process is acceptance, which I hope is peaceful. Right now my head and heart feel like a boat on stormy water. I read an article about anger in grief that described acceptance as “the final death”. That feels very big and hard to swallow right now.
Now
I’m searching for a dress to order to wear for this bench dedication and I’m hung up on wearing something Mom would like. I don’t know why I care; in her lifetime she and I were always at odds because our fashion senses were completely different. Maybe it’s some form of guilt or the idea of heading toward a finality point in her passing. Maybe the answer is to just wear what I want, just to bug her and she can’t directly say anything to me? If she has the power she’ll blow the wind just right or make me spill food on my dress or something. I’ll report back.
I feel called back to a book I read in high school—Night by Elie Wiesel. The book is about his experience in Concentration Camps during the Holocaust. I cannot relate in any sense of the horrors he experienced, but the grief he writes about makes more sense now as an adult vs age 16. I remember thinking how intense his sentiment about memory is how you keep people alive, and when generations die, so do the people that lived on in their memories. He wrote,
For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.
In her final days, my Grandma Dorothy reflected on how she missed her Mom and she was 91 years old then. I guess missing Mom will never go away; memory and its consequence, grief, go hand in hand. I’ve found solace in this other quote from Wiesel as well:
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
So she lives on. She’s just not here to tell me I need a different necklace to go with my dress.
Soon I’ll be planting flowers. I’m researching climbing flowers for a trellis I’m constructing in my back yard and shade plants for my front porch. I’m also on the hunt for Miss Molly Butterfly bushes. Planting locations tbd.
Well I talked about a German author so here’s my sauerkraut and pork recipe
Just kidding. I wouldn’t do that to my readers. And yes, I know which of my reading audience family members are going to give me grief about eating sauerkraut and pork.
Anyway, comfort french food? Cheese will always have my heart.
Croque Monsieurs (croak mahnsuurs)
French Ham and Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients:
Bechamel Sauce (critical to the Croque Monsieur essence, don’t skip!)
1/4 C Unsalted butter
1/4 C flour
1 1/2 C milk (I used 2% because that’s what I had but the original recipe calls for whole milk)
1/4 tsp dijon mustard
dash of ground nutmeg
dash of pepper
Sandwiches
8 slices of thin sliced bread (I used white Italian bread)
8 slices of deli ham, thin sliced
2 1/2 C of shredded Swiss cheese, or gruyere cheese if you can find it
1/4 C shredded Parmesan cheese
Directions:
Bechamel Sauce
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Whisk in flour and cook, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes and adding milk gradually. Make sure mixture remains smooth while adding milk.
Cook, stirring, until sauce is thickened.
Remove from heat. Add dijon mustard and seasoning and whisk.
Set aside to begin constructing sandwiches
Sandwiches
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit
Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil. Be sure to spray foil with cooking spray; these sadwiches will stick to the foil.
Place 4 slices of bread on prepared baking sheet.
Spread each bread slice with a layer of béchamel, spreading it all the way to the edges.
Then, top each with a piece of ham, a handful of swiss or gruyere, and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese.
Place remaining slices of bread on top, then add another coating of béchamel on top.
Top with remaining gruyere and parmesan cheese.
Bake at 425 degrees for 7-8 mins until cheese is melted. If you know how to broil, broil these for 2-4 mins to get cheese golden and crispy.
Enjoy!