CathyNY

"How are you doing?" I'm getting a lot of that lately, and the answer is okay, not great. I'm up and down. Still lots of problems with focus. I had to call my best friend yesterday and tell her I had found her son's bar mitzvah invitation (I had totally forgotten to RSVP) and yes we would be there. I found another invitation in the mail bowl, completely forgotten. Need to call and offer an apology. My writing is totally off-schedule, I doubt I'm going to meet my self-imposed deadlines for this spring. Lucky it's not a conventional job or I would probably have been fired by now.

Dad's memorial service is next week. Yes, next week, almost a month after his death. There were a lot of details to be worked out and since my mother, who is actually on the spot, is not legally next of kin (due to their divorce), it all seemed to fall on me. Why me, and not my brother, I don't know, and I haven't had the energy to work out why. . . It doesn't really matter at this point as most of the hard work is done. The memorial service is next week and I am hoping it will provide some closure. I want to move on. And I also don't want to move on, because moving on without my Dad is currently impossible to accept. Yup, that's a contradiction right there.

I'm worried about my mother. She's been so impossible lately and I've finally concluded these are not her usual dramatics. I think she's sad, lonely, and afraid, unable to visualize a future without my father there. Odd that two divorced people could have that kind of relationship, but according to the social workers not uncommon in this day and age. She can be so nasty it's easy to forget that the fear and loneliness are real, that she's 75. Wish we could have some closer contact, wish she wasn't so incredibly destructive. In spite of everything, in spite of our history, I worry about her.

The strain and sadness isn't doing my marriage very much good at present either. Don't worry, I'm not making any major decisions about my marriage this month. But I do know this whole thing isn't doing us any good. Probably most marriages go through their rough spots, we've had a very stressful few years with many of those stresses (family mental illness, financial losses, uncertainty about DH's job) not being in any way our fault. But those times do have a way of worsening any cracks in the foundation. We have some right now that need fixing and I just don't have the spare energy or intelligence to apply to the task. Also disappointed that DH's attitude seems to be that fixing them is another one of my responsibilities. He'll go along to a certain extent but he doesn't seem to have any serious skin in the game. Wish he were pulling it together and being there for me a little bit more, rather than behaving as if the whole thing is a major pain in his behind. I don't feel as if I should be fielding complaints right now about his sex life or how he doesn't have enough clean socks or how we're having chicken again.

It would really, really help if I could get a decent sleep pattern going again. I doubt I'm getting even six hours most nights. It would also help if the sun would come out.

OK, vent over.