I was on slight vacation since Independence Day. I spent time with my parents in the Poconos. It was my first time there without Larry and I had a small panic attack about how I would relate to my parents without Larry. I wanted to leave the minute I got there. Larry was always a good buffer with my family and the holidays usually centered around what Larry would cook. My Dad felt like finally there was another male person around. It was nice to take Larry aside if a family member was driving me crazy and it was ok because we were a team. It's clear that although my family greatly admires my skills, they think that my boundary setting is odd. That's because they don't have any and so things can get dicey. After the Poconos where my parents live, I went to the shore where my parents rented a place and I was flooded with memories about going there with Larry and how we went there last summer and how little he was able to do and how I tried not to talk about it because it was clear that Larry did not want to talk about his cancer at all. Even three weeks before he died, bedridden, I felt it would be kind to see how he wanted his funeral to go and he got mad at me and didn't want to talk about it. So we hobbled around town ignoring the obvious. My last memory of the shore was a sad memory but I didn't realize it until I got there. My 16-year old niece was visiting from Florida (my deceased brother's daughter) and I was charged with picking up her friend and taking them to the shore. I didn't really want to do this, I have been feeling like maybe I have Lyme's disease because I have been in a LOT of physical pain and it seems to be getting worse. Will get everything checked out, don't worry.
Anyway, didn't want to do a lot of extra running around like going to the grocery store and getting lunch for the girls, getting money out of the bank, taking the teens to get special leave in conditioner so their newly colored hair wouldn't fade, etc, simply because I'm feeling so exhausted but I didn't feel like there was a way out. And this, to me, is the hardest part of grief...that sometimes you commit to things you are not ready for or are not up to and when you realize it, there's no backing out and it makes you afraid to commit to anything.
When we got to the shore (and I had to keep slapping myself to stay awake for the hour drive) we needed to find the rental place which wasn't ready yet, then walk to the beach loaded up with stuff and get beach tags on what was an unbearably hot day. I was getting a blister from flip flops and I was starting to get flooded with the memories of my last time in this town. I asked the girls to walk the quarter mile further for beach tags, gave them money, sat down and just had a big, fat, meltdown. The best part about crying in public is that everybody stays well away from you. I wanted to turn around and go straight home. And for no good reason, I seemed to want to blame my parents. They should have known that I wasn't up to running around for the teenagers. (The teens are lovely and grateful and it wasn't their fault.) At that point a friend called (she always seems to find moments when I'm at my lowest) and talked to me for a bit about my disappointment at feeling so much physical distress. Eventually, I got in the cool ocean water and some of the stress melted away. Then I met up with the same friend who called and who is a very interesting person and we all had a lovely evening in an unlikely restaurant because we ran into a violent storm with filled water glasses flying off of tables and crashing where just moments before people were enjoying an outdoor meal while walking to dinner. The only place that could take us in less than an hour was a very swanky bar so me, my Dad, my niece, her friend and my friend sat down on a black leather couches and chairs and had very delicious bar food.
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