It’s crazy what stress does to people.  I’ve been in touch with friends to let them know why I’ve seemingly dropped off and/or haven’t responded to Season’s Greetings, and why it is that I have no plans for my birthday (although now a friend has made an ‘executive decision’, which was needed, since for a while I was in ‘reptile-brain-primary-functions-only’ mode).  

Extended family has been visiting from another province as has my 87 year old maternal grandmother – sharp as ever, but shorter than ever too.  This morning she was slowly walking circles in the living room and when my sister questioned her on it she replied “I’m averting rigor mortis”.  Yeah, don’t mess with grandma, she’ll give you a vocabulary whipping like you’ve never seen.

The random drop offs of food have been such a help too.  With all of the family here we are actually forced to make meals and eat them which is helping us as well – quite a few days of just toast in the morning and advil at night.  My eyeballs feel like they’ve been in a salt bath for days which combined with the consistent frontal lobe headache makes for long days.

But I do feel the need to point out the coworkers of my sister’s who thought it would be a great idea to hop in the car, drive 1.5 hours to get here, and then proceed to go to the hospital, go into my mom’s room in palliative care (they have never met my mom, and we have asked that only immediate family visit her) and then call my sister and tell her that they are here.  Yeah, well, I currently hate those people.  Really, what the fuck are you thinking?  Anyway, getting angry typing that so need to move on.

Back to grandma.  I can’t imagine how this is for her.  She has lived almost 30 years longer than my mom will.  Grandma is getting overly tired from the situation, all the people here, the weather etc and so wants to go back to her house which is about a 14 hour drive away (but is flying home).  She went to the hospital to say goodbye to her youngest daughter – I don’t know how…. <sigh>  She has been so strong and has helped all of us to calm down these last few days…  She leaves tomorrow – so there will be quite a few more tears shed.

Quite honestly I am a tad worried about when I head back to Seoul.  One thing that I am not ready for is the “How was your break?  Mine was fabulous blah blah blah….”  and I hate to tell people that I don’t know (is that an oxymoron seeing as I’m telling you and perhaps we don’t know one another — you know what I mean).

I don’t know what else to say.