phantom limb

i have all of these words and feelings about you, around you, toward you. without you.

you are torture. toxic. angry. bitter.

in pain.

i wouldn't say you were a limb cut off of me. it was more a slow wrenching of a limb. constantly painful. 

painful still.

you're out there. in the world. still full of anger and spreading your toxicity.

victim.

it hurts me. i think back to the times i miss you, and it is eons. lifetimes ago.  when i was small and we fell asleep holding hands. when we swam in your pool and had sleepovers at your house.

losing you is more than losing my sister, my oldest sister, my big sister. it is also losing the history you hold. 

oh, now i think of that small girl in her big sister's bed and my eyes sting with tears. my heart hurts. you were there. you knew.

it's not a losing of pain, cutting you out of my life, because i still feel it every day. it's a dark and thick pain; an undercurrent. while i might not think of you every day, i still feel the current connecting us.

which makes sense, because we are sisters.

does it ever go away?

i think sometimes it might, and that hurts even more. knowing you're out there, wondering just wondering always wondering.

i should have slapped you that day. that day in the sun next to your car, i should have slapped you. but at the last second i adjusted and shoved your shoulder instead.

"why don't you go cry over your dead dad's grave."

i should have slapped you.

our relationship (if you can call it that) should have ended years ago. it shouldn't have lasted as long as it did. but the boys. we kept you in our lives because of the boys. we wanted to be in their lives.

i still feel rage. and now immediate sadness. my eyes burn with unshed tears. they pool as i try to blink them away.

where did that big sister go? the one i held hands with as i fell asleep?

so much complicated grief. 

up and down and in between

3/5/08 1129 am
i want to create something.

i want to build something with my hands. i want to take an imageideathoughtfeeling in my brain and see it in the physical world. i want colors. i want shape. i want to feel it in my hands.

sometimes this feeling is overwhelming. most of the time it's fleeting, this urge. this need. sometimes the image in my head is a building. other times it's a painting or a book. i need to take this something that lives in my imagination and see it under the sun.

i woke up with a headache today. dreams of surf reports and incoming tides and grocery stores. i've been dreaming of grocery shopping a lot lately. did i tell you about the one where i went to the grocery store in my socks? i had to get eggs. the only eggs that were available were the big 36 egg packs. when i opened a box, all these little baby chicks flowed out of it. i tried catching them in my hands. they kept coming out of the box. little yellow blops of fur with tiny feet flowed out of the box. their fluff hanging in the air, their little feathers suspended as they rolled out of the box like a wave. and then i didn't want anything to do with scrambled eggs or omelets or any of that anymore.

what was i saying?

oh.

dreams of surf reports. i slept through my alarm clock. woke up to the surf report. got to work late. parking lot is atrocious. really. big F2355s taking up three parking spots. other cars not pulling in all the way, making me drive serpentine through this obstacle course.

oh yeah.

oh, so bad mood today. i'm tired of thinking of protein and fiber. i'm tired of drinking 8 glasses of water a day. i went to the gym on monday and tuesday. a few observations:

gyms STINK. they smell like sweat. old socks. sweaty towels. B.O. and crotch.
it's funny seeing all these people (myself included) runningwalkingsweating soooo fast--to nowhere. soooo fast. rows and rows of treadmills and ellipticals. men and women running up stairs that go nowhere.
we live in san diego. san diego, people. and we're crammed into a gym running ourselves silly watching tv.
yep.
hamsters in wheels. instead of calling it a hamster wheel, i decided to call it a ferris wheel. i ran the ferris wheel yesterday. sounds mo' bettah than a stinky gym next to stinky people (or is me stinky?) running stinkily toward the news and shows on tnt.

where was i going with this?

creation. i'm not talking babies or anything. a project. hmmm.... i have a few ideas for sketches. some ideas for painting. some framing ideas. some sewing ideas. quilts. my mom had a sewing room. she used to make sunday dresses for me and my sister. every sunday we had a new dress. lace. buttons. puffed sleeves. ribbons. flowers. beautiful dresses. her sewing room was yellow. piles and piles of fabric were all over the place. sometimes i would wake up to the sound of the machine. i fell asleep to it. we'd pick out colors. we'd go shopping for patterns. we would stand in that room and she would press patterns to our bodies, getting measurements. oh, the measurements! arm measurements, length, waist, stand still, hold this. i can feel her hands holding that thin, wrinkly brown paper to my back, smoothing it over my shoulders. i can hear her voice, muffled from holding pins between her lips. i can see all the sewing projects in different stages of completion. draped over chairs, over themselves, over the ironing board, hanging on the closet knobs. the carpet is full of pieces of trimmed fabric. little whisps. vivaldi plays in the background.

oh, mom.

nurse nell was just here. i hope she doesn't mind me posting about this. her family suffered a loss recently. i remember that feeling. those feelings. i remember wanting to be out of it. or at least to know when the grief would stop choking me in the middle of the night. when i would be able to breathe without feeling like i was drowning. i wanted to know when. six weeks? six months? when would i not miss him so sharply.

there's no time limit. i thought i saw him at a bus stop in claremont a few months ago. right across the street from where i was getting my car washed. the car wash i took his car to many years ago. i had forgotten to turn the radio off, so the antennae was left up. it went through the swish swishing brushes and soap. the antennae never went down without a fight after that. it was always a little crooked. i don't remember if i told him about it. ("dad, i'm the one that broke the antennae." i loved it when he drove. i always felt so safe. like a rockstar.) so i thought i saw him sitting at a bus stop. i sat on the bench across the street and watched him. i knew it wasn't him. i let myself pretend for a minute. wouldn't that be funny. my dad's afterlife and he's taking bus rides through claremont. he was wearing what he usually wore... a polo shirt, cargo shorts, a good pair of running shoes. sunglasses.

face to case.

crap. this wasn't going to be this kind of post.

there should be a book. "grieving for dummies". i suggested it to nurse nell. maybe we can start a book club on it.

what was i saying? oh... creation. yes.

****
post script: i googled "grieving for dummies"

forty nine years ago today

happy anniversary. i love you forever.
i miss you both.

uncle john and the amazing john installation

conversations with my uncle john are always hilarious. he's a very animated man. he gets ahead of himself when he's excited about a story, or thinks something's funny. similar to my dad, his brother, who couldn't get through telling a joke without laughing hysterically in the middle of it. it took forever for him to get to the punchline. because the only thing he was thinking of the whole time was how funny the punchline is.

my uncle was describing how his son, adam, was renovating his house. here's part of the conversation i had with him.

"his ex GIRLFRIEND is a MONster!" i thought maybe she was a raving bitch or something. he continued, "she bought a TOILET a WHOLE TOILET and came over and HOOKED EVERYTHING UP! pipes and EVERYTHING!! and it WORKS!!"

you know that high voice some women get when they're telling one of their girlfriends about an injustice, a good shoe sale, something their boyfriend, husband, boss, sister did that they couldn't believe?

my uncle john has a high voice. and so far i've only ever heard it when he describes a woman installing an entire toilet.

i have my mom's hands

(my grandmother, my mom, holding me in my fancy christmas duds, and my cousin)

1. she was a bad driver
2. she never used her blinkers
3. she loved us. oh how she loved us
4. she sang to us
5. crazy silly songs about catalina matalina oopsy daisy donna wanna okopokoloko was her name.
6. she sewed
7. quilts
8. sunday dresses
9. for me and my sister
10. every sunday
11. she fixed everything with an ice cube or a popsicle
12. she loved us
13. she was a lady
14. she taught us manners
15. every part of me that is a lady is from her
16. she protected us
17. you didn't mess with her
18. she never knew how much i admired her
19. but she does
20. every part of me that is strong is from her
21. she typed fast
22. she taught me how to make tortillas
23. she taught me what family was
24. she was so funny
25. she was so patient
26. she had a favorite
27. and that is fine
28. because she's my favorite, too
29. she had this way about her...this way of speaking. she had this way of putting so much emotion into one word. she could say my name and i would know instantly that i should stop pulling my sister's hair, or that she was proud of me, or that she wasn't kidding when she counted to 3.
30. her hands soothed so much. her touch on my forehead, the way she brushed my hair, how she tucked me in at night. i have that touch with those i love. i feel the way they love that touch, how much they feel my love from my touch, and i learned it from her.
31. she loved the opera
32. and ballet
33. and classical music
34. i used to hate it
35. i miss her sewing room, so full of light and so many fabrics, always with the classical music
36. she wore opium
37. i see the bottle, but i can't smell it
38. if i were to smell it right now, the memories would bring me to my knees
39. she loved my dad
40. so much
41. i never heard her call him by his name
42. he was always dad or honey, never ever gilbert
43. she made his lunch every morning
44. i remember so many mornings waking up next to her
45. the sheets so warm
46. we would just lay there, feet tangled, morning breaking
47. she was so safe
48. so safe
49. she made popsicles
50. she gave me so many things to pass down
51. one day, after a hard day of school, i cried into her shoulder. she told me then, "friends will come and go, but your sister will always be there."
52. i didn't believe her then.
53. but that is the strongest, truest thing she has ever taught me
54. she didn't teach me to speak spanish
55. she called my history teacher a "fuck hole" after they had an argument about an assignment of mine when i was 16
56. i was never so proud to have her in my corner
57. she loved her sister and her family
58. she left us with that, our blanket
59. she married young
60. she protected her family
61. everything ballsy i have ever done or ever will do, is from her strength
62. she gave me my fair lady, brigadoon, the quiet man
63. oh, and she gave me my love of books
64. she read and read and read to us
65. she would ground us by taking away our books. while our friends were getting their phone taken away, their nights out with their friends, she would crush us by taking away our books
66. she was funny
67. she had her own living room, with the "special" furniture and glass table
68. and we didn't cross that line
69. only to take pictures in our sunday dresses
70. she called me lally. i will always be hers. other people in my family call me that, but it's never the same
71. i miss her so much
72. she broke my heart
73. i still love her
74. forever
75. she taught me how to tie my shoes
76. she gave me an infinite amount of memories that i can't even think of right now, but that have shaped me into the woman i am today.
77. i was a surprise
78. at the ripe old age of 38
79. she stopped for a milkshake on the way to the hospital before delivering me
80. i will think of a thousand different things to tell you about her after i post this
81. i love her so
82. i would give anything to see her, just to see her, not even to say anything to her. just to see her reading a book in the sun.
83. i pretend to have conversations with her over the phone
84. i catch glimpses of her at the grocery store, i think of her when i hear someone whistling south pacific
85. oh, she could whistle so sweetly
86. she gave me my sister so i wouldn't be lonely growing up
87. my sister has proven quite a valuable plaything/cohort/partner in crime
88. my mom was right about so many things
89. oh, how i love her
90. "if a a boy tells you he doesn't deserve you, he is right."
91. "also believe him if he tells you he is an asshole."
92. she thought i was funny
93. and was always in my corner
94. i don't know what i would say to her if i saw her
95. i would say nothing
96. i would hold her
97. i would thank her
98. and that would be enough for me
99. i smell her perfum now
100. oh, and i want to hold her