Processing through the death of both parents
by Cindy Myska, co-founder of DailyHap.com
It’s an existential funk, an existential crisis, she says. It’s what her brother Jordan sang about and she wrote about. My daughter gives me room and helps me to hold this depleted, lifeless space I have become locked in. I never much went here before, to this space of nothingness, lethargy and damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Damn, Damn, Damn.
Only I don’t use curse words. So I don’t damn anything or anyone, especially myself. I just go silent, definitively and unequivocally silent. Silent to myself, and silent to everyone else. Push, push, push through the fog of sluggishness. Push, push to get things done.
They died last year. My mom and my dad died last year. Seems like yesterday. Never thought I would react this way, never thought there would be an existential crisis so many months after they died. Except it is not so many months after they died.
I have been in this existential funk for months, since the all night vigils by each of their bedsides, since the funeral plans, the flowers, the possessions, the pictures, the attorneys, the accountants, the memories.
The awful memories of that week in the hospital where my Dad wanted so badly to go home. The questions, all the questions, the WHY, WHY WHY. Why did he go into the hospital, although dehydrated and not eating well, but still walking and talking and full of life and sensibility, and come out dying, only going home because we called hospice? WHY?
I KNOW why, really. And I do not want anyone to try to help explain WHY or tell me it was meant to be or it was what my Dad wanted. I do not want any idiot explanations, and I do not want any spiritual explanations, and I certainly do not want any logical explanations. I just want to shout at the universe WHY?
I want to say “Papa, WHY didn’t you tell me you were ready to go?”
And so I stay here in this existential funk, this lifeless, muddy mire, contemplating life. Wondering if life is enough. Wondering if anything matters. Grateful my Dad and Mom lived, gave me life, loved me. Realizing how much for granted I took their love, realizing I do not want to take anyone’s love for granted. And yet I want everyone to take my love for granted because it is true and real and should be taken for granted.
And then there is Time. Time stands still in existential funks. I blame it all on time. I hate time. Time keeps me imprisoned. Be on time. Do it on time, save time, don’t waste time. I don’t have time, never enough time. I sell my time for a living. I never had enough time to spend just sitting and visiting. So now, damn you time, I will sit in this timeless, dead, still, horrible muck of a space.
And I will sit here until I am ready to breathe again. I will sit here until I can cry again, smile again, walk again, think again. I will follow my children’s lead and put into words this emptiness. I will feel my feelings of nothingness until I am numb. And when I am done I will choose my way out into Life knowing it is not enough and never will be, and I will smile.