I am not good at grief. After my father died, I spent the next three months ruminating about my past, going over interactions I’d had in the past from childhood to just weeks before. Then I would berate myself for handling those interactions poorly, for not being kind enough, for not being smart enough, or savvy enough to seize the opportunity or avoid pain.

Oh, it was awful. My skin was so thin it was.. this is like a “your mom’s so fat” joke. My skin was so thin the wind could cut me… What a terrible insult comic I would have made.

Suffice it to say, I had no skin. I took the compost one morning to drop off and a man said, to someone else, “good morning,” and I felt deep, deep offense and insult. The only reason I remember this is because a friend was there and saw it and was confused by it. All interactions were painful. All interactions personally injured me. A neighbor brought us a casserole because my dad died and I felt it was personally insulting. If it had been funny, it would have been very funny. But it was not funny.

I grieve like a narcissist, I’ve decided. Or maybe I grieved like that because my father was a narcissist and I’ve picked up many of his attributes. Or both. Or neither. The quality of my grief process has not been vetted by any reputable organization so I can only guess.

I have tried to understand my own grieving because I will grieve my mother when she passes, and I really like her. I loved my dad and I love my mother but I did not enjoy my dad and I definitely enjoy my mom. More on that lower down. I need to get through this stupid grief business if only for myself to understand myself.

Why are you bringing this up now?

Yes, why? After months of silence, why this random topic on this blog which is supposed to be about your neighbor?

I bring it up because I think I’m grieving again though on one close to me has died. On the way to Saturday’s Hands Off march, I said to Calvin, “I feel like I did in my twenties when I was in a dying relationship, like a mix of dread and panic.” He nodded and smiled while trying to make sure we were on the most optimal train car for the most optimal route—that’s what he does. He would like me to figure it out so perhaps I can stop bursting into tears at weird moments.

But I wasn’t quite right about that. I don’t feel like that. I feel like I felt after my father died, but to a lesser degree. I can function in public. I can have mostly normal conversations. I don’t sit for hours listening to a boring podcast about a polygamist cult while playing iPhone games and wondering why I was such an asshole 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 or 30 or even 35 years ago (I tended to give myself a pass before age 13). I do things still mostly normally.

I am grieving something and it has come out in being thin-skinned, in finding insult in random, non-personal interactions, in being jealous of small things others have, in again sifting through my many mistakes of the past and finding myself lacking, even though I know my younger self was doing the best she could and had she understood better, she would have acted better.

Is the poetic answer that I’m grieving America? Oh yuck. Sure, that could be true. I thought I was grieving my career, which could be true because it is certainly feeling very tenuous lately. I am grieving prosperity for sure. I am grieving hope for the future. I am grieving my furnace, which stopped working yesterday. I am grieving my 401k. I am grieving my losses since the new administration, and my losses are minimal so far.

For any MAGA who may come by, I am crying liberal snowflake tears for myself and my family and all the families of all the people who are hurt by this reckless, feckless, spiteful administration. You got me!

Will this go on for three months, like it did when I lost my dad? Oh I hope not. Because the truth is my life is usually quite fun.

Let’s talk about my mom

After literally decades of strife, my mom and I are good. I am turning into her and there is nothing I can do about that. It’s like when you hike down the mountain after a long, steady uphill, and you realize you cannot slow down without jumping off the trail and just stopping. I am turning into my mother more and more rapidly as I age and there is no place to jump off the trail and stop this.

The upside is she is a person one might want to turn into. She’s in great shape, she has fun and is a lot of fun to be around, she has meaningful work she loves, she has friends she loves, she lives in a nice house, and if only she had a cat and not her very silly, badly-behaved dog, her life would be perfect. We are both quite judgy, by the way.

No neighbor update

I think her mom just died and she is not currently at home. She attacked us a few times via texting Calvin but other than that, all is calm. I wonder what grief will look like in her and it scares me.