the 4-1-1

blargh.

that about sums up my mood right now. this morning i woke up to five text messages from my mom. the last one said "here's my credit card number to book a flight home." let the drama begin!

after a rough nite, my dad is stable. he had double bypass surgery last night. there was an episode of internal bleeding that the docs couldn't stop for a little while. it was likely due to all the blood thinners that my dad has been on since the stents were put in a few months ago. now he is in a drug-induced coma while the docs do a risk assessment - how much do they thicken his blood to help the healing and how thin do they have to keep it to avoid deep vein thrombosis or clotting. they're going to take him out of the coma this evening.

i ended up calling my little brother on the way to work. he lives on the east coast and i figured that he was in a later time zone than me, he had probably received the run down already that morning. he's not one to get very excitable and so i figured that he was a safe bet to get some straight up factual info from. it was nice to talk to him, but i could hear the weariness and fear in his voice.

when i finally did talk to my mom i asked how she was doing and she said, "well. i'm glad i'm by myself right now. i don't think i would be able to handle anyone stirring up drama or being hysterical right now." i am not kidding. those were her exact words. and yet, here she is sending cryptic text messages about coming home and complications with my dad's surgery. sending us camera pics of his unconscious body tangled up with tubes and gauze and monitoring machines. spinning all the rest of us up.

i decided to go home. i'm going to try to find a flight this evening and stay for the weekend. i keep waffling back and forth between should i go? maybe i shouldn't go? i keep trying to figure out what the right thing to do is. my guy said "follow your heart". i can't tell the difference between what my head is telling me and what my heart is feeling. i want to retreat. retreat! retreat!! i want to go to sleep through this whole ordeal. i don't want to deal with it. i don't want to be around my dad in his current condition and the rest of my family because i know i'll want to cry, but i don't want to be vulnerable in front of them. i'm scared that they'll ridicule and make light of my feelings, that they'll turn my tears into a jokey punchline. none of my family knows how to respect grief. none of my family knows how to just sit and listen. none of my family knows how to be gentle and careful with tender emotions.

last night when i was ready to break, i thought i wanted to be alone. i didn't even want my guy around to see me all weepy and teary about this. i realize that what i wanted was to be able to cry openly, to be free to be scared, to have whatever emotions that were coming up and out of me just BE. i realize that i shied away from my guy because i didn't want to be offered a solution or encouragement. i didn't want to have to talk about it. i didn't want my emotional turmoil to be the center of attention. i just wanted to BE. i wasn't able to ask him to just be there with me. i didn't know that's what i needed. this is going to be the hardest part about going home - the inability to just be, whatever that may look like. i feel like i'll have to guard myself against the sideways jabs and funny barbs that my family tends to exchange in the face of grief. i'm worried that i'll have to compartmentalize and box up my feelings. i've worked really hard this past year to break those habits, to let it out before i eat it down.

what better way to try out my new coping skills than to go into the belly of the beast, though, eh?