I'm a procrastinator. I hate it, but it's true. Any kind of work that feels forced or has a deadline just gets pushed off, even if I don't really mind it or want to get it done. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, there is one topic my brain works constantly to take care of in advance - mourning, death, and disaster. This has been true all my life.
When I was seven or eight, I used to have recurring nightmares about my house catching on fire several times a week. Before I went to sleep every night, I even made sure I had everything on hand that I needed to grab so I could get out quickly if a fire hit. By the time I became clinically depressed in high school (a period which has thankfully passed), my fears had matured to include the deaths of my parents, my friends, even myself (mostly as an afterthought, because few teenagers can really conceptualize themselves dying). Nearly every night I would lay awake in bed, thinking of all the ways my parents could die. What would it feel like? How would I find out? How could I live without one of my parents? How could I keep going under the crushing agony?
I can feel it, you see. I have felt in my heart a miniature version of the pain I know will come when they die. It stabs and it burns. I can't imagine what the real version will feel like. But that's not the point. The point is that I have mourned the death of my parents a thousand times when there has been no reason to even think they were in danger. So much of my life has been spent wasting time investing in a sadness that won't decrease later for all that I'm putting into it now. So why? Why do I live with this?
The truth is that I love my parents more than anyone else in the world. I have amazing friends who I love dearly, but no one can compete with my mom and dad. They are truly amazing, loving, smart, kind, and good people. They have given me so much love, great advice, and every opportunity to be the best person I can be. I can never thank them enough, and I can't imagine my world without them. It is for this reason that in the dark hours of the night after the best Christmas I can ever remember having - sitting with my parents and exchanging gifts and love and stories - that I have fallen into a deep sadness. I remember exactly how much I have to lose. And I'm not being randomly paranoid - without being too specific about my mother's age, I can tell you that both my parents are early baby boomers. They're not old, but they aren't spring chickens either.
I guess I also think my life has been too good and my luck has to run out soon. I've never really suffered in any way that counted, and I feel like it's got to bite me in the ass any day now. My mother once got in bad bicycle accident and another time we thought she was having a heart attack, but both turned out okay. My father has had to go to the hospital several times for heart problems to get his heart set right with the paddles - maybe that counts. I think that problem will kill him someday, and every hospital visit carries the risk that his heart will just stop and not start again. Do the suicides of an aunt and a cousin count? The deaths of three grandparents? The amazing grandmother I don't remember because strokes rendered her entire body unresponsive? I don't know. I don't know what will satisfy the universe.
These days, the depression is gone but the fears are not. The nighttime terror only hits every month or two now, but it hurts terribly when it does because I know that whether I have suffered enough to satisfy fate or not, my parents will die. And on the nights when the terror strikes, I see car crashes. I see flat lines. I see The Big One (the massive 9.0+ earthquake that's long overdue) hitting Seattle and crushing my parents in their beds or making the bluff under the house slide away, carrying my parents with it. I hear one parent calling me to tell me the other has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The list goes on and on. And I know that I will see the deaths of my parents come to pass one day unless I die before them. That is an unacceptable alternative because one of the worst things a person can suffer is to bury their own child, and I know my parents love me at least as much as I love them. Therefore the only hope that I have is that my parents live to a truly ripe old age in good health, and that when they die I'll have a husband and a child of my own to give me the love I'll need to make it through what will hopefully be the worst times of my life.
Great. This means that logically I have to get married and pregnant ASAP to help get my fear under control. That seems like a bad motivation. Also, I'll then be even more terrified about the safety of my husband and kid. I feel like I'm playing fear Whack-a-Mole where hitting one more just makes the next one bigger, angrier, and rabid. I'm gonna need a bitter mallet.
If you made it through that entire entry, thank you for reading what must have been one of the most morbid and depressing blog posts you've ever seen. Maybe some of you saw yourself reflected in it, and if so, I'm sorry.
P.S. Mom, Dad, I love you, and I fully expect one of you to come at me crying as soon as you read this. Sorry.
Thanks for sharing, and I wish I had something more useful to say. Just remember how fortunate you are to have such close relationships with your parents: with almost everyone I know (and within my own family) parental relationships range from distant to actively hostile. So even if your time with them is finite, it sounds better-spent than with any other family I know.
ReplyDeleteCompassionate people like you make the world a better place, even if being compassionate is painful.
Much as I do not wish to sound trite, your paranoid fears echo many of my own. It doesn't help much, but you are not alone in fearing, although it eventually comes down to each of us individually when we must deal with the grief and pain and despair of losing someone we love more deeply than ourselves.
ReplyDeleteWhen these dark days come, know that you have a gigantic network of friends who love and care for you. Even though we can't really compete for the same affection you have for your parents, or the affection that they have for you, there are still tons of people who love you. May it be many, many years before you need us to help you through such terrible times.