Friends and Shit

I'm not gonna lie.......I'm not in great emotional shape at the moment. And since a blog is value-less unless it's honest, I figure I owe any other parental caregiver out there the courtesy of being perfectly candid about what's going on for me right now. "Now" meaning...........with Mom and Dad both gone, the house up for sale, all of the things my parents have carted along with them from house to house for the last 67 years being boxed up (by me) in preparation for the eventual estate sale, and me trying to figure out where/how I'm going to be living once the house sells. All those articles about how caregivers get really depressed after the people they cared for are gone.........I completely and totally understand that now. The sense of uselessness is overwhelming.

This is sort of Debby-Downer stuff. Sorry.

Earlier today I was standing in the sunroom and the morning sunlight was streaming through the windows, and the view of the Olympics was beautiful, and the sky was a perfect shade of cloudless blue, but all I could think of was that, aside from my slightly overweight English bulldog, Emily, and my significantly neurotic English cocker, Uma, I wasn't really "needed" anymore. It was one of those classic George Bailey moments--"Why am I even here? I'm worth more dead than alive. What a complete loser I am. " (Okay, Jimmy Stewart never said "complete loser" but the sense of total despair was certainly along those lines....)

It was somewhere in the middle of the thought, "What's the point anyway?" when my cell phone rang.

See, I have these two friends. And I don't know how to explain it, but on more than a few occasions over the last few years, when I have been really (I mean, REALLY) low.....one or both of them, for reasons that continue to amaze me, think to pick up their phone and call me.

So there I am, floundering in the sun room, up to my nose in some pretty serious depression, when my cell phone goes off. And it's one of my friends, calling to see how I'm doing, calling to say 'hi', calling to remind me that they love me and are thinking about me, calling to tell me that everything's going to be okay, calling to remind me to stay busy, move forward, or at least just keep moving. How do my friends know this shit?

Anyway..............so I want to say out loud here how indescribably grateful I am when anybody leaves any kind of comment or "heart" or....whatever on this site or on the Facebook site. Thank you. Really and truly. Thank you. I feel shitty and hopeless most of the time right now even though I know, on some intellectual level, that things will, indeed, be okay down the line. It's strange--going through a day feeling equal parts shitty, complacent, and apathetic, with glimmers of optimism sprinkled here and there. So if you feel like commenting with a word or two, please do. I'm not looking for sympathy. But a "hang in there" or a "You'll be fine" could be just the thing that gets me through the next twenty minutes.

Garbage

As long as I can remember, my parents have had, on the kitchen counter right next to the sink, one of those little rubber-coated-wire gizmos that you fit a quart-sized, clear, plastic bag into. It's for "wet" garbage--bones, peels, apple cores, melon rinds, meat scraps, etc. When it's full they just knot the bag and......and this is one of the things that makes me crazy about it.......toss it into the big plastic trash bag. Plastic in plastic. Makes every carbon-footprint in my bones shudder. As far as I know, the rubber-coated-metal-holder gizmo is the original one Mom got at the store at least twenty years ago.

Those of you who know "where I'm at" currently in terms of what's going on in my.....uh.....life, will understand the next bit.

Ten minutes ago......I walked into the kitchen, stopped, stared at that gawdawful, disgusting, rubber-coated-wire gizmo. Just stared it down. I observed that it was full. I realized......it's always full. I realize on top of that realization.......it's always BEEN full. In fact, I realize yet again.......I don't think I've ever seen it empty for more than 10 seconds. Full. Full. Full. Of garbage. Garbage. Garbage. Detritus. Debris. Shit. Gar-Bage. G.D.M.F.C.S. garbage.

So I walked very calmly over to the sink, picked up the whole works, the G.D.M.F.C.S. rubber-coated-metal-holder gizmo and the Garbage inside it, and I tossed it....dropped it really, for the last time in anybody's life......into the large plastic trash bag.

Eeeeyup. I done tossed the garbage.