![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaToday (Wednesday the 18th, although who knows when I will edit and post this) (future Juu: ~3 days later, apparently) I am engaged in an internal debate of "am I upset because my grandmother died this morning, or because I am making it out to be indicative of the larger, and awful, state of the world"—which is, of course, a trick question, as the answer is "both."
We were not close; her death was not unanticipated given her age and health issues, and the prior death of my grandfather, nor was it under particularly bad circumstances. So there's nothing especially to grieve, except the loss itself. Historically I have a relaxed relationship with grief, insofar as I never particularly miss people—in my daily life, or after their death.
So when I mourn this, I recognize that most of what I'm mourning is my father's terminal diagnosis—I mourn the fact of death, of loss; I've developed a significant apprehension of both in these last years of pet deaths, my sister's cancer, and my father's cancer.
The experimental inhibitor my father was on didn't return positive results, so he's off that and back on chemo. The right-now doesn't change significantly, but it is not a good indicator or the lucky break we were all hoping for.
I feel like I'm only justified in mourning my grandmother's death had I made any effort at all to be involved in her life—and that becomes a self-recrimination that echoes back to anxieties about my relationship with my father, and with the rest of my family, and with the social circles with which I'm not engaging. When I am this fearful and unhappy, it's significantly easier (and sometimes healthier, and frequently unavoidable) that I retreat from all socialization. So what am I missing, really, when these people die/will die? I don't interact with them anyway!
I think a lot about tikkun olam—about the social and moral obligation to repair the world. I think how terrifying it is to face the enormity of the world's wrongs, and they are so enormous right now; they are so large, and so deeply rooted. If I cannot tackle things on a macro scale—and I can't; I can't even comprehend how one could—is a micro scale sufficient? are my relationships with my loved ones enough, do they help enough? But I can't engage in those relationships, either; and if the charge then is to repair myself, well: that is provably beyond me, even in the best of times, and this is not the best of times.
What is my culpability; what do I miss; what am I entitled to mourn?
Devon intentionally doesn't discuss finances/his education/our future plans with me, because these things are specific anxiety triggers in general and right now I can't cope with anything beyond the day to day. But he can't provide that safe space in public, so a few days ago I was tangential to a conversation between Devon and father about Devon's upcoming graduation, looking for work, incomes—potential and probable dramatic lifestyle changes? moving near or far away! all as soon a December. And I can't get invested, because I have been burned by the anticipation of improvement too many times before; but part of me is already packing for New Zealand, not because that specific location which we have both already dismissed out of hand is remotely feasible, but because it's so far away that perhaps there, if nowhere else, I won't be crazy, my dad won't be dying, my real life won't be real.
But to even contemplate that things may improve at the end of the year is to link personal improvement to my dad's declining health.
These issues seem inseparable not just because I'm prone to self-indulgent navel-gazing and desperate to excuse my own bad behavior, but also because they are. We are all swamped by societal grief. The deep-rooted problems with society are not abstracts; they are affecting people I know, relatively privileged people I know, in concrete ways that I could do something about were I a better, healthier person. The relationships between individuals are enough—are certainly something—if I could engage in them. But to recognize the link between all these concepts is a really shitty way to process loss (to turn my mother's grief, my family's grief, and a real person's death into, what, an object lesson?), and in no way helps me navigate out of the labyrinth of self-knowledge and self-condemnation.
We were not close; her death was not unanticipated given her age and health issues, and the prior death of my grandfather, nor was it under particularly bad circumstances. So there's nothing especially to grieve, except the loss itself. Historically I have a relaxed relationship with grief, insofar as I never particularly miss people—in my daily life, or after their death.
So when I mourn this, I recognize that most of what I'm mourning is my father's terminal diagnosis—I mourn the fact of death, of loss; I've developed a significant apprehension of both in these last years of pet deaths, my sister's cancer, and my father's cancer.
The experimental inhibitor my father was on didn't return positive results, so he's off that and back on chemo. The right-now doesn't change significantly, but it is not a good indicator or the lucky break we were all hoping for.
I feel like I'm only justified in mourning my grandmother's death had I made any effort at all to be involved in her life—and that becomes a self-recrimination that echoes back to anxieties about my relationship with my father, and with the rest of my family, and with the social circles with which I'm not engaging. When I am this fearful and unhappy, it's significantly easier (and sometimes healthier, and frequently unavoidable) that I retreat from all socialization. So what am I missing, really, when these people die/will die? I don't interact with them anyway!
I think a lot about tikkun olam—about the social and moral obligation to repair the world. I think how terrifying it is to face the enormity of the world's wrongs, and they are so enormous right now; they are so large, and so deeply rooted. If I cannot tackle things on a macro scale—and I can't; I can't even comprehend how one could—is a micro scale sufficient? are my relationships with my loved ones enough, do they help enough? But I can't engage in those relationships, either; and if the charge then is to repair myself, well: that is provably beyond me, even in the best of times, and this is not the best of times.
What is my culpability; what do I miss; what am I entitled to mourn?
Devon intentionally doesn't discuss finances/his education/our future plans with me, because these things are specific anxiety triggers in general and right now I can't cope with anything beyond the day to day. But he can't provide that safe space in public, so a few days ago I was tangential to a conversation between Devon and father about Devon's upcoming graduation, looking for work, incomes—potential and probable dramatic lifestyle changes? moving near or far away! all as soon a December. And I can't get invested, because I have been burned by the anticipation of improvement too many times before; but part of me is already packing for New Zealand, not because that specific location which we have both already dismissed out of hand is remotely feasible, but because it's so far away that perhaps there, if nowhere else, I won't be crazy, my dad won't be dying, my real life won't be real.
But to even contemplate that things may improve at the end of the year is to link personal improvement to my dad's declining health.
These issues seem inseparable not just because I'm prone to self-indulgent navel-gazing and desperate to excuse my own bad behavior, but also because they are. We are all swamped by societal grief. The deep-rooted problems with society are not abstracts; they are affecting people I know, relatively privileged people I know, in concrete ways that I could do something about were I a better, healthier person. The relationships between individuals are enough—are certainly something—if I could engage in them. But to recognize the link between all these concepts is a really shitty way to process loss (to turn my mother's grief, my family's grief, and a real person's death into, what, an object lesson?), and in no way helps me navigate out of the labyrinth of self-knowledge and self-condemnation.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 03:35 pm (UTC)I am sorry for your loss.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-24 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-21 01:08 am (UTC)