Grief Sucks.

  My mom has been gone for 12 weeks now.

  As Buddhists we believe that at this point, her spirit has made it's journey into the next life.  I am both happy and excited for her, as well as deeply sad.  I used to feel her around me when she first passed, but I don't anymore.  There's a sense of magic to believing your passed loved ones linger around you.  I no longer sense that.

  My dad and Chi flew out to California to do the last prayer ceremony and to scatter her ashes in the ocean.  I wasn't able to go because of work and timing, but they were able to film it so I could see it.  I was disheartened that I couldn't go, but not much you can do.

 This entry is just going to be a continuous stream of thought that may connect or not.

  Over the past couple of months I've been asked, "So how are you doing?" a lot.  My go-to answer is, "I'm okay.  We're figuring things out."  I can't say, "My mom died, how do you think I'm doing?" which oftentimes crosses my mind.  I can't say, "I'm different somehow after she passed.  I'm not the same." I can't explain that my days aren't as bright because there's a cloud following me.  Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

  I keep busy.  I'm at work until 7 or 8.  I am constantly with people and making plans with people.  I come home usually around 9 or later, say hi to my dad and sister, shower and go to sleep by 11:30 pm.

 My dad works late, he comes home, eats, and retires into his room and talks to friends and family on the phone for a couple of hours.  That or he's watching/listening to youtube clips of Buddhist sermons or Vietnamese music.  I worry about him, he just seems lonely. I burned a DVD of my  mom talking about how she made her way over here. The video's from 2010 and it's over an hour long and my dad sat there and watched it for a long time.  We all miss the sound of her voice.  I'm so glad I filmed that.

 My sister is either at school or at the store helping my dad, or in the study on the computer for hours. She's decided to completely change her career path and other things in life.  I worry about her and her future.  She's a very "I want to do this now so I'm gonna do it" type of personality and doesn't seem to think things all the way through before doing it.

 But we're figuring it out.  My mom was very much the glue in this family; our sounding board, our common sense, our heart.  What do you do if your heart is gone?

 One of the things I dislike the most after my mom passed is that time seems to move too quickly.  Death doesn't stop anything from moving on. There's this saying in Vietnamese my mom told me, "You live for a week, but you die for a year," saying how short life is.  It just doesn't stop for anyone.  It goes on.  And I don't like that.

 I think it's become more difficult and more painful the longer it's been.  It hasn't gotten easier at all.  I don't think it's truly sunk in for me. I have powerful triggers throughout the day that knock the wind out of me because it brings to surface a memory of my mom.  Someone can say a word that for whatever reason, my brain connects with and a memory floods into the forefront of my vision.  It plays out like a movie in front of my eyes... reality kind of blurs and fades out, and noises and sound become muted.  It only lasts a couple of seconds until I snap out of it, but my heart is really heavy afterwards.

 The other day I was talking to a friend and he said something about salt.  That one word made my mind do a flashback of when my mom had to have sodium pumped into her for an hour because she was low.  That was the last week of her life.

 I mean, it's crazy! They get more frequent, these triggers.  It just randomly happens, and afterwards I always get  angry because of how unfair everything is.  My mind then goes into a depressing, "She won't get to be at my wedding, she won't get to meet her grandchildren, I'm too young to have lost my mom, Chi's even younger, unfair, unfair, unfair-" and it just cycles into a slippery slope that takes me awhile to get out of.

 Eventually I calm down and can count my blessings--  I had a wonderful mother who loved me until her very last painful breath.  I had her in my life for 26 years, there are lots of people who cannot say the same. She was loved and knew it.  What more is there?

  It's just hard.  It's awful, all of these feelings.  I'm generally a very happy person, so to feel devastated randomly a couple of times a day is just foreign to me. I am constantly on the edge of tears.  Sometimes it just wells up without any kind of notice.  It's exhausting.

 I got an email from a UCO professor asking if she could send some drama observers to watch me teach for 30 hrs, and I had to email her back and tell her, "I'm so sorry, but I'm emotional this year because my mom has passed so I won't be taking any observers." And in typing that I almost cried while at work.  Ridiculous! I know, it's not ridiculous, it's normal for what I've been through, but it's just not like me.

 Grief is just awful.  It's like having someone stab you but they left the knife in.  You may forget about it for a bit until you move, then you remember how painful it is and how very present it is.

 I'm glad that I have good people around me and that I can be busy with work.  It does help a little. I just don't see how this can get any easier with time.