Breaking Down
Every once in a while I get hit by a sensation that is only describable as overload. It is a headrush feeling, a sensation of dizzyness, faintness, weakness, and the world collapsing in on me. The trigger is always the same, a realization that …. that mom is never coming back. I know that it is going to send my Cali-friend into hyper overdrive on the concern levels, but, the only way I have to fight back against those feelings is to shove them back, to refuse to let them in. I tell myself again and again that she is just not here, I convince myself that she is visiting my aunt down south, took a trip to the lower 48, is in town shopping, is asleep back in her bedroom… whatever it takes not to think of the truth.
I know the truth. I know she died and is buried and I will never see her again, but that is not something I can think on without crying and I can’t cry. Not yet. I have to focus on taking care of my dad, because that is what she would have wanted. Mom set everything aside to take care of him. We used to talk as we would drive into town, to make plans that one day, when it was just her and me, we would go gold panning and do all of the things we could not do now. We were going to drive down south, to the lower 48 because she has things she had put off that she wanted to do. It was going to be me and mom facing the world together. She had promised me and herself that we would do so much – someday.
I can’t even type this without crying, which means that since I am on the couch as I write this, I am hunkered behind the screen of the laptop where dad can’t see me wiping my tears away with a Kleenex. I am fighting every day to stay strong for him, to not break down because he needs me, and knowing every day that one day those struggles are going to collapse in on me and I will be buried in emotions I can no longer fight back against. I just need to hold it all together for as long as he needs me.