luncheon

(unedited)
Hung out with my grandmother last night - the woman is 87 years old and still looks amazing. The people at the home love her to pieces - all coming in, giving her big hugs and kisses, smiling, waving, wishing her more happy years to come.

The best was when the head nurse came in holding an inflated latex glove tied around a straw with the words: "Happy birthday M.S"

"I just wanted to give you a little something to make you laugh" she said

M.S was short for Mother Superior, a joke name my grandmother gave to her when on her first day, she was given her medication. "Oh, Mother superior says I have to take my meds already? Oh, okay. You don't argue with her!"

Now they call her mother superior!

What a beautiful and tender moment - that really made me smile, and despite her saying that she would'nt be needing the jewelery soon, that she was going "far far away", she wore them proudly and eloquently. Sharp as a nail she is - and I'm happy to say I come from that pedigree.

So that made for a nice night because I was really getting down - this lifted my spirits.



but today - same old

saw my doctor

how do you feel?
like shit
what would you like to do?
You tell me, you're the one with the prescription pad...


lists upon lists of drugs, their side effects, classes, rates of effectiveness

I guess we go for the upping of the mood stabilizer
but I also suggest you think about the other one
oh, the "anti-psychotics"?

Euuh
just saying that word gave me the chills


Those are heavy duty drugs, and the mere thought of me taking them, in the other half of my troubled mind says: this proves that you are a freak

but am I really?
I don't feel like one
but many people have told me that I am
whether or not they were joking or serious makes me now start to wonder.

A strange thing has happened - I seem to be trying to fight my own self-imposed stigma about taking drugs for my manic-depression.

could it be all in my mind?

I know it's not - saw the actual MRI where the little lights flash off and on in certain parts of my brain when they shouldn't be, was walked through the description of chemical imbalance and misfiring neurons by esteemed psychiatrists, and was told by them that this is indeed, a chemical imbalance.

If somebody was diabetic, would you ask them to "snap out of it?" a compassionate doctor once asked me.


I guess not
or would I?


Walked downtown for some retail therapy. Got the "drivers instruction manual" and am determined to get my license this year - no question. Past 40 and no license just screams fear for me. It was hard not to walk by the "self - help" section, to glance at "managing your bi-polar mind" and something about "mothers and daughters - when your parent dies".

Goddam it. She's still around! Why are you looking at those things?
in preparation?

Lame ass excuse for being morbid perhaps


Then thought that since I was nearby, a call to mom would be nice - so that's what I did.

I don't know how she does it - calm, even keeled (when she's not stressed about work, but in that concrete jungle (literally) who isn't?) and in good humor despite her condition.
However she does it, I didn't question too much, just enjoyed her company and the fact that she was being "my mom" - listening to me, telling me things would be okay, giving me the unconditional support and love only a mom could give.

We lunched at a very chi-chi restaurant in the ground floor of the museum, ate strange artistic looking sprouts on our plates, sipped some cafe au lait and had a few laughs.

The kind of therapy I needed.

Before she left I gave her a big hug and told her that I loved her so very much.
You can never tell your mother enough times how much you love her


One stop on my way home was into the Hallmark store. I felt bad for not calling my cousin again after her mother (my aunt died) in October. Perhaps calling her and asking how she is dealing with things makes me more aware that both sisters had cancer, one is gone, and the other is still around, but maybe, not for too much longer, and that I will be in her shoes - dealing with the grief, loss and hole in her heart. Distance sometimes is a good thing, but then it can be a bad thing.

Picked up a sympathy card and will send it tomorrow - will try to explain myself, why I've been hiding, try to explain my fears and my unconditional support that will always be there because we were so close, and that even though she lives across the country, I am just a phone call away.

life is strange
so is death
but let's not go there right now
let's just enjoy the luncheon we had
no use in *'pre-grieving'

*that is a new emotion that I'm struggling with...