Friday, 12.28.2012 - 10:47 pm.
I meant to write on christmas day, but everything has been a whirlwind since I came home last saturday. I've been hanging out with 14 people, and that's just my nuclear family: parents, siblings and their partners and kids. It's been awesome seeing them all and celebrating with them.
I've seen friends too, of course. But I want to get my socializin' wrapped up by the 31st, ending with breakfast with my friend Virginia, so I can dedicate the last day of this year and the first of the new one to my family and to myself, before I go back to Chile. I want to be with my mom, especially. Whenever I go out, I feel guilty for not being with her and I just want to run back home and hug her.
Her last chemo is tomorrow. Tonight was the last time my four siblings and I were together in the same room and in the same country, until who knows when again. Brother #1 returns to the USA tomorrow to go back to work, though his wife and two kids will stay here for another week or so. They are such grown-ups now (sort of); Nephew #1 and Niece are both in college now, with stable relationships, working and studying and making plans to move here or there.
We got the chance to talk, my brothers, sister and I. About how our parents, regardless of my mom's cancer, are aging in that scary way, they are regressing. My dad has slowly stopped driving. In a way it's a relief, he kept sucking at it more and more over the years. He let me drive without putting up a fight one of these days. But it's also alarming, how they're both becoming more and more reclusive and dependent.
My mom has become way more sensitive and emotional (blame it on the illness and treatment) and my dad has gotten worse in his child-like manners. He nearly threw a tantrum about something that my mom had and he didn't (he doesn't like it when she gets all the attention, though he gives in most of the time when it's cancer-related) and tonight during a family conversation my brothers and sister had to tell him to stop interrupting and let other people talk, and when he tried to continue by yelling, Brother #2 pretty much scolded him, telling him not to raise his voice. My dad has this terrible habit of turning conversations into monologues and interrupting people at any point by shushing, which is just very, very rude.
It was hard noticing all that, as a whole. Last night I was at a reunion of cousins from my dad's side, and Brother #1 was talking to other cousins about the deterioritation of their parents in character and in agency. My uncles and aunts are going through the same thing and it's scary. They are more and more dependent on their adult children. This is all textbook psychology of development, except it's out of the book and into the reality. Most of my cousins are in their 40s and 50s though, and I'm in my 20s. I'm one of the youngest of the bunch of cousins, so I think my own aging process still hasn't hit me...that much. I have a few white hairs already. Teh lulz.
I had this horrible feeling when I saw my mom going to the hospital this morning. It's my first time witnessing her during her treatment, and I know it gets worse a few days after the chemo. I felt all this anguish that I hadn't felt before. I feel very guilty for doing so little while my dad and siblings have done so much for her, and I feel guilty for living so far away. They'd never say a thing about this, they're just happy that I'm here with them and that it's good for my mom. But I wish there was more for me to do to help.
***
Speaking of family, I miss Andrew so much. I've talked to everyone in my family about him, and last night one cousing approached me and said "so, you're getting married". It caught me off-guard but I blurted an affirmation. Andrew has called me two times over the phone and I can't explain the joy and the love I feel when I hear his voice. It's so unreal that I have a life waiting for me in South America.
I don't want to leave my family but I also can't wait to be with him again, I'm crazy about him and I can tell he is about me. And I feel like crying because I can't have both my family and Andrew at the same time.
***
I've been thinking a lot about Joseph. Don't call it a relapse, I'm ok. I've been so reminiscent, I guess, because I was in excruciating agony over him during the holidays, four years ago. Strangely, I've wondered how he is these days and I've hoped he isn't sad (but I don't want to know). I was cleaning up my bedroom today and in a huge box full of correspondence, I found a black bracelet he gave me. He had a few of those and he wore them all the time. I wore that one. That's possibly the only tangible thing I have left of him, and my heart shrank in pain when I saw it. Actually, I have a picture of him somewhere in that box too, but I wasn't going to look for it.
I also came across a few pictures of us, while organizing old photographs in my computer. I had a picture that went in a certain folder and when I opened it, I saw him, picture after picture. I didn't click on them, I just looked quickly at the thumbnails. He was so damned handsome. There were some good pictures of us (we took very few) that didn't seem as bad as I though they were when I took them. I love one in particular, I think it's the best: he's in a suit, I'm in a black dress. I have my hair and make-up done, he's wearing sunglasses and is smirking. We look gorgeous. That was the day he broke up with me.
prev / next