A bit melancholy

I'll tell you friends, it's been a long week. A lot of things that have gone on are things that would normally have sent me spinning and carping, but right now these are causing me just to have a short temper with people and write them off, tell them to grow up and get a real problem.

My father-in-law is dying.

We've spent the last 2-3 days trying to get a reasonably priced fare between Michigan and Brazil for my husband, while both of us deal with the oscillating emotions of whether he should go while I'm this close to delivery. But the truth is, if he doesn't go, he'll miss it all, whatever "it" is, that is. Holding his father's hand while he's doped up on morphine and comatose, holding a sister while she cries, getting to attend a funeral, who knows.

And so it is that I find myself before 6a in the morning, unable to sleep any longer despite the first persistent migraine in two months accompanied by severe pelvic pain and one reluctant dose of vicodin, watching the sun creep slowly into the horizon.

I'm realizing that dealing with all this is another way in which I have discovered how much I love my husband.

I want my daughter, the one that's not born yet, to at least be heard by her grandfather, even if that's only over the phone. But I'm afraid it's far too late for that.

The fender bender that happened to our car a couple weeks ago and the ensuing repairs that are taking over a week, that seems unimportant. That I repeated that fender bender almost perfectly with the other car two days ago also seemed like a dream, like it was life passing before me. Everything seems trite and banal. My sister's jealousy over my pregnancy, my ex-mother-in-law dissing me to Grace day by day, the cat suddenly staging a protest over using her litter box and using the carpet in the den instead...all this was really important a week ago. Today? Not so much so.

I'm wondering if being in the midst of clinical depression is making me more melancholy about the whole circumstance. But maybe it's also allowing me to be more in touch with my feelings and be more sensitive. Maybe it's making it possible for me to feel my emotions more accurately than if I was busily distracting myself with the normal overstimulation and hyperactivity I regularly feel.

We saw Grace at a swim meet yesterday afternoon. It was the first time she'd seen my husband since she learned of his father being ill. When she was done with her first event, she came to us and gave him a hug. It's the first time she's ever done this spontaneously, without someone telling her she should (like on Christmas after receiving a gift or sometime like that). The gesture was not unnoticed.

I suppose life is like this. You live, you experience, you feel, you learn. Somewhere along the way you realize, this is what living is. I guess right now I'm wishing that living didn't include the dying part, the dying of people around you and of yourself as well.