![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mni'Cause my brain's been abuzz with thoughts, and I've been deliberately holding back, until now...
My last post was as light as a snowflake. This one is as heavy as ... Death.
I'm feeling rather ... (I don't know the real word for it) "Meh-ish" about the "condolences" I've been receiving about my father's death. On the one hand, I really do feel the love from all my friends online, and feel the support, and it really does warm the cockles of my heart. ... But...
But my mother died almost exactly 15 years ago, and I never quite got over her death, in the first place. And however close my father has been to me in my life, my mother was ten times closer. My father was an airline captain when I was growing up, which meant that he was gone 3-4 days every week (Of course, that also meant that when he was home, he was really home, so I still probably saw more of him than kids whose fathers commuted to and from work every day). But Mom was with me almost 24/7. When she died, it felt like half of me died with her. And it feels like only half of that has grown back in the intervening years.
One of the things that helped me form a renewed and stronger relationship with my dad was that he was the one person who also shared a family relationship with my mother -- lots of people admired her as a friend and a colleague. But we really knew what she was like when she was home. And very few of the people who are around to comfort me now even knew my mother at all.
So anyway, I was kind of bothered by this line that my cousin wrote in my Dad's obit:
He lived a life of peace and serenity on his 27 acres of woodland in Putnam County, New York.
It wasn't his land -- it was hers. She's the one who spent summers on that mountain, growing up. And she's the one who, when we were driving back from her father's cottage, one weekend, decided to drive home the long way, and when we saw the sign by the road advertising a house for sale, she's the one who decided to look around. The house and land was in her name, when she died, and she left it in her will to Dad (so technically, yeah, I guess it was his when he died, but ... meh...). I don't want importantance to be forgotten. That line reads like it was Dad who was lord of the manor, and he'd have been the first to tell you that he was just the caretaker, preserving her memory.
I told my cousin how I felt (after I figured out what it was that was bothering me), and asked her to just strike the word "his" from that line. ...She said "okay." But I don't know if she really understood. I hope I didn't sound too petty or jealous (my dad was Toni's favorite uncle in the world -- she idolized him, growing up).
And so it feels like I'm reliving bits of my Mom's death, now, as well as my Dad's.
Both of their ashes will be scattered on that land, and the bodies of all my pets, from the time I was seven, are burried there. It feels like my soul has its roots entwined around the rocks of that place.
And now, I'll have to figure out what stuff I want to most to keep (If I have storage room for it), and sell everything else--the house and land, and it won't be my home base, anymore.
And I know this sounds horribly shallow and geeky and Sad!Fann-ish to the extreme, but the other day, late one night/early morning last week, the thought popped into my head that: "Now I know how the Doctor feels, with the loss of Gallifrey and all his people." And I had a good bawl for the next half an hour.
Felt a little bit better after that... but I still wanted to cuddle a boulder from East Mountain...
My last post was as light as a snowflake. This one is as heavy as ... Death.
I'm feeling rather ... (I don't know the real word for it) "Meh-ish" about the "condolences" I've been receiving about my father's death. On the one hand, I really do feel the love from all my friends online, and feel the support, and it really does warm the cockles of my heart. ... But...
But my mother died almost exactly 15 years ago, and I never quite got over her death, in the first place. And however close my father has been to me in my life, my mother was ten times closer. My father was an airline captain when I was growing up, which meant that he was gone 3-4 days every week (Of course, that also meant that when he was home, he was really home, so I still probably saw more of him than kids whose fathers commuted to and from work every day). But Mom was with me almost 24/7. When she died, it felt like half of me died with her. And it feels like only half of that has grown back in the intervening years.
One of the things that helped me form a renewed and stronger relationship with my dad was that he was the one person who also shared a family relationship with my mother -- lots of people admired her as a friend and a colleague. But we really knew what she was like when she was home. And very few of the people who are around to comfort me now even knew my mother at all.
So anyway, I was kind of bothered by this line that my cousin wrote in my Dad's obit:
He lived a life of peace and serenity on his 27 acres of woodland in Putnam County, New York.
It wasn't his land -- it was hers. She's the one who spent summers on that mountain, growing up. And she's the one who, when we were driving back from her father's cottage, one weekend, decided to drive home the long way, and when we saw the sign by the road advertising a house for sale, she's the one who decided to look around. The house and land was in her name, when she died, and she left it in her will to Dad (so technically, yeah, I guess it was his when he died, but ... meh...). I don't want importantance to be forgotten. That line reads like it was Dad who was lord of the manor, and he'd have been the first to tell you that he was just the caretaker, preserving her memory.
I told my cousin how I felt (after I figured out what it was that was bothering me), and asked her to just strike the word "his" from that line. ...She said "okay." But I don't know if she really understood. I hope I didn't sound too petty or jealous (my dad was Toni's favorite uncle in the world -- she idolized him, growing up).
And so it feels like I'm reliving bits of my Mom's death, now, as well as my Dad's.
Both of their ashes will be scattered on that land, and the bodies of all my pets, from the time I was seven, are burried there. It feels like my soul has its roots entwined around the rocks of that place.
And now, I'll have to figure out what stuff I want to most to keep (If I have storage room for it), and sell everything else--the house and land, and it won't be my home base, anymore.
And I know this sounds horribly shallow and geeky and Sad!Fann-ish to the extreme, but the other day, late one night/early morning last week, the thought popped into my head that: "Now I know how the Doctor feels, with the loss of Gallifrey and all his people." And I had a good bawl for the next half an hour.
Felt a little bit better after that... but I still wanted to cuddle a boulder from East Mountain...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 05:54 am (UTC)On the contrary, I think the way you identified with the character speaks to the emotional verisimilitude of Doctor Who, and validates it as a real piece of art.
*sends more e-hugs your way*
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:17 pm (UTC)Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 06:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:16 pm (UTC)Also, the property is right on the border between two counties: it's not actually in Dutchess County, so I can't use any services for the diabled from there, and it's in the hinterlands of Putnam County, which doesn't have any services of its own, but shares with Weschester, and Westchester services say I'm too close to Dutchess County to qualify for their services...
"Falling between the cracks" is never a literal phrase, but in my case, in that house, it comes close.
I hope to be able to sell the house to the neighbors who've helped my dad and me out this last year (at a ridiculously steep discount, if necessary); they've lived on the mountain nearly as long, and love the property nearly as much...
But still...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 04:16 pm (UTC)Either way, I hope you keep *something* of it; a rock, a bottle of dirt, anything. Connection to the land is something we've almost lost in this mobile society. It's something I've never had, never being a homeowner (nor were my parents).
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:12 pm (UTC)I hope I can keep something, too. Though rocks and dirt in isolation don't really mean much -- it's the rocks and earth in context with the light and seasons.
And I can't even get my head around the idea of never being connected to a spot of earth... to me, that seems a bit like being a disembodied head floating around (no offense). ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 06:40 pm (UTC)Nope - not shallow.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 08:31 pm (UTC)On the other hand, in this particular circle of friends the Doctor is a commonly shared metaphor for explaining how I feel right now...