I’m only happy when it rains

I’m only happy when it’s complicated

Not. It’s been raining a ton, so this song has been in my head.

But I am so tired of the figurative rain in my life.

This was written last night, but I think it pretty much sums up where I’m at, what’s been going on, why I haven’t posted much this week. 

It’s raining it’s pouring

I wish that I was snoring…

It’s 11:30 pm, which I know for many isn’t horribly late, but it is for me.

I need my 9 hours of sleep.

But I can’t sleep because today has been the most depressing day. Ok, not really.

But the most depressing in quite awhile.

My grandmother has been in the hospital with an angry gallbladder etc. for a few days now. It’s not too… I don’t know the word. But she’s 96 and shit breaks.

What surprised me today was how much being in a hospital, listening to chances of recovery, listening to talk of quality of life, made me think about, and hurt for, my mother-in-law.

And it’s all just so poorly timed because we are leaving this weekend to go to Toronto to see the in-laws, minus one.

Minus the one who was… the life of the party. The engine of the family. The queen.

And what an empty court without its queen.

And I must be watching too much Downton Abbey because I’m writing this with a snobby English accent.

Anyway. I sit here hurting for two Nana’s. My kiddo’s, who left too soon. And mine, who’s really grandma to me, who may be dying at a ripe old age, with years of memories and a large family to leave behind.

And I don’t know which to write about.

Because it’s all just tied up into one big mess of hating mortality, disease, and having to say goodbye.

And my grandma isn’t dead yet. So it seems bad juju to write as if she is. But she’s not getting better. And she’s 96. 

So. Nana.

I’ve slowly been dreading this trip to Toronto more and more. Not because it’s awkward (it will be). Not because it’ll still be cold in Canada when I’ve been enjoying 80 degree weather. But because there is going to be this big gaping hole. Like, a physical lack of Nana in this tiny apartment where every corner used to scream “Nana’s shit. Don’t fuck with it.” That shit will all be gone. I helped put some of it away (in the trash) after the funeral.

But this is the first time we are going back since last June when she died.

And she won’t be there, feet curled under her on the couch. She won’t have her crazy tray of pencils, notepads, calendars and pill boxes beside her.

Where will that tray be?

She won’t be passed out in her super inclined bed. She won’t even be down the street at the hospital, wishing she could come home and make sure every piece of her fabulous jewelry would have a good home after she was gone.

It will just be empty without her. And without all her shit. All the signs of her living, day in, day out in a hoarding, pack-rattish sort of way that makes me realize my husband married his mother. And makes me want to run home to clean.

But that apartment will be so much cleaner this time. So much neater. So much emptier.

Fuck. I don’t want to go. I do, but I don’t want the sadness that it is, and will be bringing.

And my grandmother just makes it hurt all that much more. I may be facing the death of another family queen.

Though my grandmother would deny being it.

Nana fucking rocked that role.

P.S. I just got home from seeing my grandma, and for any family that is reading, she is actually seeming much better. Much more alert.