Invisible Galactic Goat checking in from the treetop
16Greetings Earthlings! It’s your horrible April Goat checking in for a quick “Howdy do!” and to thank all previous Goats for pitching in while I’ve been taking care of family business.
I’m in a very deep in a rural part of the country, and to get a single signal bar I have to hike about 1/2 mile up a hill behind Mom’s house, then climb a tree to break the canopy. From here I manage to get a relatively stable single signal bar. Tomorrow I’ll run a rope over a branch so I can just hoist my hotspot enabled phone up the tree and use my tablet to do some business.
As shared previously, my stepdad passed on Wednesday. I had to catch a red eye early Thursday to help Mom TCB. Funeral home and florist Thursday to arrange burial, notification of friends and family etc. Friday was the marathon 4 1/2 hour viewing. This morning was the memorial, followed by procession to the cemetery and burial ceremony.
It’s been raining cats and dogs ever since I arrived. The storm front chased me during my 2 hour commute from the airport on Thursday morning and decided to settle here for the duration. Nearly 2 inches last night alone. Thunderstorms and strong winds all day today. The cemetery was a mud hole. Particularly challenging ceremony, to say the least.
Anyhoo, I am going to stay on here through Tuesday to help Mom TCB all the legal stuff, and hope to catch a flight home Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Wish I was in the position to stay another week, as this will be the first time in decades Mom will wake up in an empty house. I’m positive this will be a very difficult transition for her. 
Thank you again to all the Goats who’s kindness and compassion compelled them to pitch in during my absence. And to the entire community for the overwhelming outpouring of condolences and prayers. To you all, thank you, thank you, ten thousand times thank you!
I will do my best to check in soon!
Humbly indebted,
Galactic Goat
- 5 comments, 4 replies
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Again, sorry for your loss. Take care of your family and nevermind us idiots. Be well, Galactic Goat.
I can’t imagine trying to climb a tree for signal…
The previous goats have taken care of everything. Don’t worry about anything. Take care of your mom. I lost my dad and it took a huge toll on my mom, so I can understand how you’re feeling. Don’t forget to take care of yourself as well.
Selfishly speaking, I want a picture of this tree. With either you, or the cell hotspot dangling in it, if possible.
My heart goes out to all of you and yours, esp you Mom. I hope plenty of people are nearby who care enough to bring her out of herself and her grief.
In my personal experience, immediately after a death, there was shock, numbness, needing to take care of a lot of stuff, exhaustion. But lots of people around checking on other people, so lots of human contact. The worst thing then was trying to sleep. Too tired to be useful for anything, but unable to sleep because the shock of losing someone and the unfathomable scope of the personal loss haunted my thoughts and kept me awake.
The harder times (for me) were later, when life had gone back to routine. Then - the missing person’s absence is felt so acutely. Then the grief drags one down, and part of one wants to grieve, and another part is angry that the loss and grief are such a weight, and another part really wants the grief to stay, because the person is gone, and the grief is the most acute thing left behind that one can still feel. So sometimes I wind up feeling angry at grief for messing up my life, and guilty that I feel that way, and really wanting the freedom to do nothing but grieve, to hang onto it because it’s the most tangible thing left.
And all those months, no real energy. And, after months have passed, not wanting to show the disinterest in life and sadness to other people who are being supportive and kind, not wanting to drag them down. And wanting to be “normal” in public, and having to fake it a bit, or more than a bit. I think everyone who ever lost someone - or a beloved pet - goes through some of this. Or a lot of this.
I really hope you Mom has a lot of community and ties nearby to be with her during this time. Eventually, it starts to let up, for most of us. Slowly.
@f00l
This is the hill. I have some fishing line ready to rig up my hotspot hoist, but It’s been raining steadily, so the hike across the field and to the top of the hill is a bit of a proposition for today at least. I opted instead to drive down to the highway where I can get a solid one bar signal. Hopefully the rain will let up this afternoon and I can get my hotspot set up.
@ruouttaurmind
: )
@f00l I watched my dad work through my mother’s death; she was the very young age of 51. And then, a few years later, my sister and I dealt with my dad’s passing, at the still-young age of 63.
Your description of what comes happens in the next week or so is the tenderest, most accurate accounting of this nearly universal situation.
“Having a good cry” used to be a remedy our mothers and grandmothers suggested; it doesn’t solve any problems, but it eases the heart a bit, and uses up enough energy to make one tired enough to perhaps sleep a bit.
Although it’s been 32 years since I lost a close family member, I want to thank you for your words and heart in describing how to survive a loss.
@magic_cave
Deep loss is an odd and terrible thing to get thru - or has been for me. Surely it is for everyone.
My approach: In public, I try to shoulder through, but attempt to be without denial if someone asks, or my grief or fatigue is visible. In private, or with trusted persons, I make an effort to be calm and ready to deal with life, and usually manage that; but I don’t just shoulder through - that seems to me to be the road to very high physical and emotional indicators of stress, and possibly some degree of internal extra pressure toward unexpected irrationality (I am no psychologist).
I really dislike being totally overcome by emotion, even when alone, but if that happens, it happens: and in any case I don’t try to not feel it. I suspect there may be measurable medical consequences (and also personal and social consequences) to too much burying of natural responses, even if those responses are very painful, or seem like surrendering to emotion.
These capacities to be “reasonable” about natural emotional responses are a new development for me. Before that, I was really good at burying everything. The good, the bad, the ugly.
Most of my grief when I lost my Dad a few years back was “carried in my head and heart”, by simply thinking about him and about the loss, more than by being flooded by feelings to the point of breaking down or similar. But, for a long time, those thoughts and memories were so intense to me, that even tho I might have appeared to be visibly calm, I needed to be alone to think them. So I sought a lot of solitude, to have the freedom to think and feel freely in such an intense way.
It bugs me a little that the hard grief has passed, and his loss seems far more normal now. If I still grieved as I once did, Dad would “feel closer”, and I miss that feeling. But I can’t control the emotional effects of the flow of time. There are “trigger objects” and “trigger experiences” that bring the loss much into the foreground, and I ration those in my life. I don’t want their power to wear off, and I don’t want those objects and experiences to just become “normal life”, and also I don’t want to dwell on loss long past the time when I couldn’t help thinking about him all the time. I guess the drive to hang on to tiny pieces of what or whom was lost is very strong in us.
Every person does this in a personal way. No predicting what anyone’s exact response will be, tho there are predictable patterns. Knowing of Kubler-Ross and similar research was very useful personally. I don’t know that her model is exactly correct, and I know there is criticism. But the culture she studied is ours, and much that I felt in the aftermath of loss seemed more reasonable to experience because I had read her work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kübler-Ross_model
Hugs
Take care of you and your family. Shenanigans will be here when you are ready to come back. Sometimes prioritize is critical. Hugs and sympathy and prayers for you and your family.
@ruouttaurmind I don’t have a lot of time to check in here much right now, so I apologize for the belated message - - - Please accept my deepest condolences for your family’s loss.
This goat shit is dangerous (as I can attest to all too well from experience).
Take care, fellow fucker.