I Don't Think I'm Doing This Right

Mom's funeral was Sunday.  Well, the first one, anyway.  We'll have a graveside service mid-April in Illinois.  I think that's a 15 hour drive.  I want to drive to take stuff back for my kids, but who knows how that will all work out.

I'm home now, which is where I've wanted to be for a while.  I have a bunch of stuff from Mom's in my studio.  Everything is packed in here so it won't take up room in the rest of the house.

I'm pretty sure I'm not feeling the way I'm supposed to feel, and even as I say that, the therapist in me is saying something like, "There is no 'right' way to feel grief, blah, blah, blah."  And what I'm mostly hearing is the "Blah, blah, blah."

After the funeral - actually, after my eulogy was delivered - I felt nothing more than relief and eagerness to get the apartment cleaned out and things back to "normal," whatever the heck that is. Now I feel a lot of things.  I feel a fairly strong sadness, but I really can't say why.  I think I'm sad because I don't feel sad enough.  I don't feel sad about the right things.

I don't feel as if I just lost my Mom.  I felt that way the first time my mother asked me my name.  I've had about a year to feel sad about that.

I feel pretty angry.  I'm angry because things didn't go as I thought they would at the very end.  I wasn't there.  I wasn't there in the last days while she was sick, though I could have been.  I didn't know she was sick.  When she didn't answer her phone, I thought she was just gadding about.

I stayed with Mom for a week here, two weeks there, before she moved to the assisted living apartment.  There was a time at which I got pissy with everyone and that was the last of the regular calls and emails from some extended family, and actually that was just fine with me.   I got pissy with Mom's "Special Friend," and that was the end of our friendly relationship.  And that, too, was just fine with me.   I'm angry with those people, with the people who didn't call me when Mom was sick, and, of course, mostly with myself.

And so, of course, I feel guilty.  It's nothing new when it comes to her.  I've felt guilty about her most of my life.  That's honest, and I know it doesn't make me sound particularly nice.  I'm not particularly nice.  I should have called the front desk and asked about Mom after two missed phone calls.

I feel tired.  A soul-deep, weariness.  I want to climb into my bed and stay there for a week or so.  Maybe a year.  Maybe forever.