Getting a bit heavy...

I went to visit my grandmother today. She's been in hospice for, I believe, at least a couple of months. (Time, particularly now that I work nights, seems to be losing its meaning. I'm becoming less and less conscious of it to the point where it seems I only find myself noticing it is when other people are involved.) Over the weekend, she had what is assumed to be a stroke. As she is in hospice, they're obviously not going to be running diagnostics on her, so what happened remains speculative. Still, she is now mostly non-verbal, refusing food and drink, fighting against care, and ultimately just lying in her bed, head cocked back, mouth open, drawing what sound like pained breaths. Her nurse estimates maybe a week.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel--if I'm to be honest. What's really hitting me is a distinct lack of feeling, particularly in the presence of others. As par for the course, I don't seem to feel anything but isolated when others are around. Even with my mom I'm not really great at showing or even feeling feelings. Moments like these remind me just how limited my emotional expression is in the presence of others.

Alone, I have more access to them, but even then, I'm sort of at a loss. Why don't I feel more sadness, more sorrow? I spent so much of my childhood with this woman. I traveled with her and my grandfather all around the country. Stayed at their house more times than I can count. She was such a presence in my life, why do I feel so little?

Some of it, I know, has been my long-standing issue of only seeing people in terms of either what they can do for me. I've had this issue for so long. It gets in the way of any sort of properly formulated relationship and some of that comes from regret for the way I treated my grandparents over the years. With her death imminent, I know I won't be able to make it up to her in any sort of real way. Worse, I don't regret having not tried earlier.

While deeply generous, she was not always the easiest person to be around. Both her and my late grandfather were a different sort of people, people who believed in spoiling me while treating my mother like shit. Seeing how they've treated her over the years makes it difficult to be a decent person towards them.

Maybe that's why I feel so little, outside of this confusion. Maybe deep down I don't care. Maybe I'm glad even. I hate to even type that, but maybe it's, at least in part, true. After spending way too long taking care of me in one way or another, mom moved to taking care of her husband's kids and mother, then to taking care of her own mother. When has she really had a chance to not have to be a caretaker? When has she had a chance to be free?

It sucks all the same. I hate to see how much she's suffering. I know she doesn't deserve that. She deserves peace.

Dicks for listening.