It’s Friday. I think.
Yeah… pretty sure.
We’re under a tornado warning for our area. We don’t have a basement, so we kind of just… don’t do anything special. Even if we did, I’d not go to a basement until all three of my cats were secure.
And you know how herding cats can go. So…
We go about whatever we were doing. TV show. Dishes. Maybe peek out the windows and watch the trees bow to the gusts.
Tonight, what I’m doing is prepping funeral plans for my mother.
And trying to figure out what to do with these socks.
You see, I packed a bag earlier in the week to camp out at the hospital. I packed it poorly and in haste in one of those reusable bags with no closure, so everything is exposed. I likely didn’t pack what I’d need, but I did throw in several pairs of socks on the top.
After she passed and I came home, I dragged that bag in from the car and a pair of socks fell out. The gray ones with the blue stripes. They were clean. I set them on the counter in the utility room.
Walked away with the bag, which ended up in the bathroom. Unpacked.
Then… back and forth with grief-stricken squirrel brain. I think this should be an official diagnosis; they could abbreviate it GSSB.
I need a shower after the fourteen-hour bedside day. Brush teeth? Maybe. Sleep? Yes, but... My legs feel like they belong to someone else because they’re certainly not obeying my commands.
My stomach is not cooperating. Too much tension to allow much sustenance at once. I’ve taken to having four or five bottles of liquid going at a time—water, juice, tea, something fizzy… I can’t decide. And I can’t finish any of them. They were all over the hospital room and now a different lineup is all over the house.
Since we’d headed for the hospital at two a.m., the litter boxes didn’t get scooped. I go to the utility room to do that and see the socks.
I pick them up.
Go to the dining room.
And set them on the table. I forgot to do the cat boxes because I had to move the socks.
GSSB strikes again and I’m fiddling with something—I can’t remember now. I may have fallen asleep sitting on the couch.
My uncle and I may have started thinking funeral plans. Yeah. I guess that’s what we did because I have a note in my phone of music choices and order of service.
I get up for yet another something to drink and see those socks. Pick them up. Forget the drink. Go to the office for… something.
Set the socks on my desk next to a pile of manuscripts, story notes, and a writing goal list. Those piles are foreign, surreal. I pick them up and flip through them. Flip through the calendar. What was I even doing that day before the call from the emergency room?
“Are you her daughter?” Something about consent to treat. Something about “not good.”
Six days since that life-altering call.
146 days since my aunt passed.
237 days since my mother-in-law left us.
Mom’s been gone for two.
It feels like six years.
I’m six years old—lost and confused, then I’m a hundred and six—tired and worn. And confused.
I leave the office. Go… I don’t know where. To bed?
The next morning, I find the socks on the desk and at first can’t remember how they got there. This is something I’d tell my mom at one of the breakfast dates we’d have. The case of the traveling balled-up socks. She’d get a kick out of it and tell me I was losing my mind. Tell me my cats needed to do a better job of keeping me in line.
Yeah… she’d like this GSSB part of the anecdote.
I’m functional enough to plan a funeral. Chase down flower arrangements and photos for the service. Feed the cats. Scoop the boxes (I did eventually remember).
I’m functional enough to do laundry. Some of that laundry includes socks. Which I fold and put away in my sock drawer. The Hubs’s socks are also put in his sock drawer.
I know how to do this. Sock drawers have been a thing since forever.
I’m functional enough to know Monday will come and maybe writing a blog will help sort my tangled brain. To process the tiniest sliver of grief so my body doesn’t store the raw emotion in some joint or muscle to resurrect and bite me later.
I know how to do this.
As I stand in my office on legs that aren’t mine with hail pelting the windows, I know how to check the weather. I know how to charge my phone and tuck the kitties in for the night.
I know how to do all of this.
But I don’t know what to do with these socks. The gray ones with the blue stripes.
