Grey cloud squaring off against silver linings

A woman can't always see the silver linings, all the time...even me. I've been on the treadmill longer than is rational for the past two days, and I still can't find them, and that scares me. I guess I should go down to the erg, but then I couldn't type and sweat at the same time.

The thing is, I'm not sure it is time for me to be finding something good about my Dad dying...and I take severe offense at any well-meaning citizen who tells me THINGS WILL GET BETTER. For anyone who is interested in spouting such language off at me, I'd like to just say, "HEY, I am the QUEEN of waiting for things to get better, and then guess what happens next? My cat gets cancer, my Dad gets cancer, my Dad dies, my cat dies, and then my brand new dog who is JUST STARTING to become a useful member of the family is nearly minutes away from death by anaphylactic shock. (Bee sting, yes it's rare...just like the BRCA mutation, just like a cat getting breast cancer, I seem to specialize in rare bad things these days). You try to handle these things - this momlessness, this breast cancer, this living with the gene, and then take these extra things, and THEN TELL ME THINGS ARE GOING TO GET BETTER."

I guess that's a little harsh of me, but my friends, Mrs. Lucken is depressed. No, I'm not suicidal, thank goodness...but I do feel that grey cloud settling in around me and I am practically welcoming it like an old friend. Hello, I've seen you before. Weren't you my best friend in the 1990s? Didn't I spend the first part of the 2000's figuring out how to make you leave? And why aren't my old tricks making you disappear again?

Oh, that's right, I'll never see my Dad again.

Oh, that's right, 5 weeks ago at this very moment I was keening in the stairway of his house as his lifeless body waited for the undertaker to hoist it up and into the black bag. While I watched, and took every moment of being in that body's presence because I knew that was all I was going to get for the rest of my life.

And all of the talks I was hoping for? All of the memories I was wishing he would share with me, sometime, once he slowed down a little bit, all of those moments together I was hoping he would want someday? They were hoisted up and shoved in the bag too.

So I guess this is where I become all Sylvia Plath-like, and lose all of the friends who thought I was so amazing and so full of vitality and positive energy.

I'm sorry. I just have a need for this grey cloud right now. I don't feel like being normal, or looking for the good silver stuff. It's not particularly normal to be very happy when your Dad (and your Mom in a way, as all of those memories are gone too) is now not of this earth.

If a woman only has a very extremely limited supply of sunshine and rainbows, she has to ration them...and I have three young ones who are in need of that sunshine and those rainbows as they process their own loss. So Sylvia, you stick to your blog...and Sunshine, time to get off the treadmill and make some lunches with smiley-faced notes for your progeny.

And maybe try for the erg tomorrow. It's better at finding silver linings.