Impractical Cats

I am sad but lucky. Sad but lucky. I have to repeat this to myself sometimes, when I think about how comfortable my life is—great boyfriend, cats, small group of friends with some close ones here and there—and then think of my mom and sister, alone in that great big house. And then that makes me feel depressed, and guilty, for being content when they—my mom especially—is filled with misery. Her misery spills out everywhere, pouring out to me over the phone, in person. Sometimes she doesn’t even ask how I am—she just starts talking. And then I feel guilty for dreading a phone call from her, but then I worry when I don’t.

She called me just now. Her calls have a way of clouding my whole day, or coloring it. She wants me to go to the cemetery with them on Sunday because it’s Memorial Day weekend and we are obligated to go see my father’s grave then. I thought it was kind of stupid to go for that very reason—I don’t like days of observances, or holidays, that dictate that you do something or the other. But I agreed, but told her she had the opportunity to go any old day, not just wait until a holiday and wait for me to go with her. After all, she was the one who wanted him buried in the cemetery. I would have preferred that he be cremated. 

As usual, she took my comment the wrong way. She said that as my father’s daughter, it was my duty to go, which annoyed me. As a child, we celebrated holidays (though celebrate is too joyful of a word) not because we really believed in the significance of the day, but because it’s what families did and doing that forced us into the semblance of being one.

As the two-year mark of my father’s death approaches, I have Joan Didion’s new memoir to look forward to. The Year of Magical Thinking helped me so much, although her sorrow was so spare and sharp, while mine raged and drifted like a current. Via New York Magazine:

The ways in which neither we nor they can bear to contemplate the death or the illness or even the aging of the other. As the pages progressed it occurred to me that their actual subject was not children after all, at least not children per se, at least not children qua children: their actual subject was this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, death. This fear. Only as the pages progressed further did I understand that the two subjects were the same. When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children.  - Joan Didion, Blue Nights

 After reading that excerpt, I was nagged by having read or watched something similar recently, that struck a chord. Then I realized it was from watching the movie version of Stephen King’s “Christine” (directed by John Carpenter). The protagonist, a troubled, nerdy teen says:

I think that part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids…Because as soon as you have a kid, you know for sure that you’re going to die. When you have a kid, you see your own gravestone….If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

October is such a mixed month for me.  I hate that the weather is getting colder and that leaves are changing color and that living things are dying. And I hate that the holidays are just around the corner.  I love Halloween, but I hate holidays in general.  Plus, my father died almost a year ago.  It will be one year on October 28.  One year.  I guess I have been thinking about that more often recently, dreaming about my family and my father and him still being alive. 

I worry about being trapped in an endless orbit of misery, unable to progress, to laugh, to grow, to live.  I watch others move on, but I cannot.

That time of year again:  joyless birthdays and one year since my father died.  I won’t call it an anniversary.