Tag: gratitude

A(n) (Un)Burdened Mind

On By The Homesick Homecomer2 Comments

I had a doozy planned for my next post. It would’ve probably evolved into a series of sorts, full of observations from my time as an accountant in the coal mining industry, musings on the healthcare vacuum in our area, and my best attempts at squaring my feelings about the larger forces I see at work behind the scenes.

Then my brain exploded, and I’ve spent the past four days losing the trash can in my kitchen (that’s not some cutesy euphemism – I literally cannot remember where the garbage can sits).

I’m not sure which is more terrifying – waking up on the floor, surrounded by paramedics telling me I’ve had a seizure (which is how my last two “episodes” played out) or knowing that it was going to happen before it did. Both situations are equally terrifying in their own ways.

I think back to when Elroy was born as the first time I ever felt like my body had let me down. I did not handle that revelation well at all. His premature arrival kicked off two solid years of postpartum depression that left me on shaky ground with my then-employer and afraid to be alone with my own child.

And I feel the sadness creeping back in around the edges. I’m a control freak, so knowing that something can sneak up from nowhere, sock me in the hospital for three days, erase a ton of my recent memories (while not erasing any of the recently-recovered trauma memories – thanks for that, brain), take my driver’s license, and completely change my life makes me feel helpless on a level that I can’t do justice with words.

But this time, I also feel warmth and love from my community and my neighbors. I feel the fight that that I used to finally break through the thickness of  the sedatives that kept me out for 36 hours because all I wanted to do was talk to my boy. I feel a sense of commitment to my family and my students. I’m not afraid of the potential weight gain or rage that I might experience while my doctors and I try to figure out the meds that will work best for me. I’ve finally tamped my vanity down enough to embrace the C-PAP that will be taking up residence on my nightstand really soon.

Because the truth is, I will do and accept all that and more if it means I get to spend more time with Gomez and Elroy.

I met my own mortality this week. It really scared me. And it made me really thankful, too.

My Wake-up Call

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The alarm clock has always been a point of contention between Gomez and me. He is a light sleeper, whereas if I hit the Snooze button fewer than three times each morning, I feel like I’ve neglected part of my morning routine. Early on in our marriage, Gomez made me move our alarm clock across the room from our bed to force me to get up and turn it off. He hoped that I would use my rationale to decide to just turn the alarm off and start my day since I was up anyway. He ended up having to hear the alarm and then deal with me getting out of bed and back in, then repeat the cycle every eight or nine minutes.

We haven’t owned an alarm clock in years. Thankfully, the smartphone era ushered in a whole new world for Gomez and me – a world where my alarm clock (slash Web browser slash Kindle slash calculator slash Walkman) is usually in the bed with me when I fall asleep at night. Normally, this works out fine. I try not to spend more than half an hour hitting the Snooze button each morning, and almost two decades of togetherness have dulled Gomez’s sensitivity to my wake-up routine.

But not this morning.

Gomez and I both work in the same profession. I won’t say directly what we do for a living, but I will say it’s one of the four careers mentioned in Randy Travis’s “Three Wooden Crosses,” — that really harsh song about a bus crash and salvation. IMO it’s probably my least favorite song of ol’ Randy’s, but I digress. We aren’t farmers, preachers, or hookers. We’re the fourth option. And it’s our first full week back at work, which means that I am operating at an energy level somewhere between exhausted and corpse.

When my alarm went off at 5:00 this morning, I successfully stole nine more minute’s sleep via the Snooze button. at 5:09, I had already slipped back into a phase of sleep that only Ambien can make happen, so when my alarm sounded again, I tried, and did not succeed, to Snooze again.

iPhone users, did you know that if you click the lock button on our phone rapidly, your phone will do you a solid and call 9-1-1? It totally will, but before your phone actually places a literal call for help, it will warn you it’s about to do so with a siren that I’m pretty sure sounds exactly like one at a bio-lab that alerts people there when someone attempts to steal some black death from a top-security area.

By this time, I had slept four and a half hours plus nine minutes. If you think the biohazard siren was enough to immediately wake me up, you’d be wrong. I must have slept through the first few seconds of it, but I thought I stopped the process in enough time to avoid activating Life Alert status, so I fell back asleep again.

Thought.

I was wrong.

A couple of minutes later, my phone rang. I was so relieved when I thought that I had stopped my phone from calling 9-1-1 that I had fallen asleep AGAIN (or maybe I’d never really woken up). Whatever.  I groggily answered the phone.

It was my friendly, local emergency services dispatcher asking me if I needed police, fire, or ambulance. I wanted to sound perky and apologetic, but I actually sounded nearly comatose. Even though the haze of exhaustion and sleep deprivation, I heard the incredulity in his voice when I told him I wasn’t having an emergency. I finally snapped fully awake when the very nice gentleman on the phone asked me for my age. Did I sound like a mamaw? Did I sound like a kid? Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that I sounded a mess. Then, he asked if I was sure that I didn’t need police, fire, or ambulance. Buddy, the only thing I need is more sleep. I didn’t tell him that, though. I told him that I was trying to silence my alarm and hit the wrong button one too many times. He was finally convinced enough to hang up.

Then, before reason fully set in, I decided it was time to get up and take the dog outside. Before dawn. With a flashlight. I finally woke up fully sometime around the end of our first lap around the yard.

So, I’m still wallering in gratitude. Today, I’m thankful that the dispatcher on the other end of the phone did not send someone to investigate the goings-on here, If he had, I would have surely gotten tackled in the yard.

Overwhelmed and Wallering

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I have cried more in the past week than I have in the past decade and a half.

We spent a solid month tearing down wallpaper, scrubbing and sanding walls/trim/baseboards/door and window facings, tearing out carpet, painting (and painting and more painting), hauling boxes, and dealing with several expected-but-still-unexpected hiccups that come along with buying a house that was vacant for at least a year.  The work was exhausting. The “discoveries” were sometimes exciting and sometimes stressful. My evenings ended the same way my mornings began – with a dose of ibuprofen. There were nights when my hands ached so badly from the day’s tasks that I woke myself up crying. One afternoon, I had a panic attack about hot dogs. There were moments when I vowed we would never be able to move because we’d never get the house ready. And I definitely cried a little, but there was always some new task to focus my attention on, so the tears waited and multiplied.
I taught myself how to cut quarter round trim. Gomez and I learned how to use a pneumatic brad nailer. When he wasn’t busy making new friends, Elroy learned how to rip out carpet.
And then, one day, we realized we had done all we needed to do, that any work we haven’t finished yet can wait until evenings or weekends or snow days or school breaks. It was time to move.
The overwhelmed feeling and wallering punched me in the guts on our first night here. For the first time in a year, we ate supper off of our own plates and drank from our own cups. For the first time in a year, I was able to store all of my clothes in my own dresser, instead of in plastic, shoebox-sized totes. For the first time in a year, Elroy had his own room with his own furniture. For the first time in a year, we showered in our own shower. And as those realizations came into focus, I started to waller.
I wallered in gratitude, and I cried happy, thankful tears.
I am so grateful for the generosity that has been shown to me and mine. I’m grateful for the person who offered to let us park our camper on her land. I’m grateful for everyone who kept an eye out for homes for us. I’m grateful for everyone who checked in on us. I’m grateful for people who loaned us tools. I’m grateful for those who offered to come help work on the house. I’m grateful for those who offered to help us move, and for those who spent a hot Saturday morning carrying, loading, and unloading furniture. I’m grateful for our plumber/electrician who helped me and Gomez by doing jobs that we were out of our depth on. I’m grateful for our our neighbors’ warmth. I am grateful for every kindness that has been shown to us throughout this process.
Most of all, though, I am especially grateful for Gomez. Gomez stuck with me and saw me through the worst year of my life, even though he was having a tough year, too. He let me be sad when I couldn’t be anything else, listened to me when I needed to rage or complain about this or that, and stepped in and picked up the slack I wasn’t able to carry. He listened patiently and without judgment as I tried to process all of the upheaval I was feeling. He worked alongside me and indulged my crazy paint color ideas. He didn’t get angry with me when I threatened to poke his eye out with a yard stake. I am forever grateful for the stability and consistency that Gomez brings to my life.
I’m grateful for having our own space to spend time together in. This afternoon, Elroy told me and Gomez that his favorite time in the new house is the time we spend together in the family room after dinner. That’s my favorite time, too.