funny

It's funny how our brain compartmentalizes things. Past traumas, even random junk we don't necessarily "need" anymore. That stuff doesn't actually go away...it just sort of gets compressed and stuffed away somewhere...and sometimes an event, a thought, something will trigger the memory of said past stuff and it will all come flooding back.

I don't consider myself a very good writer, at least in a blogging sense. I can write well when I'm telling stories from my imagination, but not so much with putting actual events down in a compelling, interesting, or even entertaining way. I was reading through some old posts this afternoon, mostly for lack of anything better to do, and I came upon the post I wrote the afternoon that my mom had a stroke. Except...at the time, I didn't know that's what was going on. I only knew that no one was telling me anything. The post I wrote that day, to anyone else, is probably just another pile of rambling rubbish and grammatical atrocities...but to me, it was a snapshot. It instantly ripped me back to that afternoon almost 2 years ago.

I didn't even actual realize as I read it that it was nearly 2 years to the day since it had happened. It seems like it was eons ago, now...and yet, to read that post, it was all I could do not to freak right out again. I was back there at my old job, waiting for a phone call. I was in the hospital room, watching the specialist do an ultrasound on the arteries in the back of mom's neck. I was standing in the hallway next to the bed where my mom was getting sick in a spare bedpan, waiting to have the nurse wheel her in to the MRI. I was crouched next to a payphone in the waiting room in the ED, trying to keep it together when I heard Mark's voice answering the phone, and not entirely succeeding. I was going home with my dad that first night and seeing him just sit, dazed and exhausted on the couch with a dog on each knee, for once not able to tell me that everything was going to be alright.

These are things I hadn't thought about in months. Even when my mom was in the hospital this past summer (which, honestly, was actually more traumatic...for everyone), none of the past experiences of those terrible few days ever really bubbled up at the time. I think I just had it all so nicely and neatly folded and put away somewhere safe that it never even registered with me until I read that post this afternoon.

Sorry to have been away so long, and I also apologize for starting the weekend with what could well be a "downer" for some. I hope to be back soon with something a little lighter.