Entry.

DISCLAIMER: This entry contains cursing and father-bashing. If you have a problem with either you should probably stay away.

Well, I’m back at work. I feel like shit. My head is floating and I keep tearing up and I probably should take another day or two off but I really do need to get back into the swing of things. It’s hard enough just being at home. I know I’m going to get asked what happened a trillion and a half times today so might as well do it and get it over with, you know?

So on with the updateyness…

My mother passed away last Sunday, August 14th. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day. A little after 1 a.m. on Sunday our phone rang. I scrambled to get it to hear my friend Allison. She’s a dispatcher at the Sheriff’s department. She asked if we could meet the ambulance at the gate to our house. I had no clue what she was talking about. So I go upstairs to find my Mother on the floor and my Dad freaking out. He yells at me to put the dogs up while he goes to the gate, so I do, and then go back to my Mom. She was really cold and shivering. I turned the air conditioner down and covered her with a blanket. I asked her what happened and she said she just couldn’t keep her balance and fell coming out of the bathroom. She had had a really bad headache all day so I thought maybe her medicines were off or something. The ambulance came and took her to the hospital. I stayed with Julia because she was sound asleep and so my Dad went with her.

At 3:45 a.m. he called but wouldn’t talk when I answered the phone. He called again at 4:20 and told me that it was bad. Really bad. But that we should probably just stay at home and pray. I told him I wasn’t going to sit at home and wait for my Mother to die without being there. I got Julia up, called my sister Teresa and then Julia and I went over to Teresa’s house and we all went to the hospital together. We were still hoping for the best … we were praying to anyone that would listen to keep our mother safe.

We got to the hospital a little before 6 a.m. They were taking her for a catscan when we got there. Dad told us then that she had had a stroke and there was a lot of blood on her brain and that her heart was stressed … and she’d always had a weak heart.

Fuck. How do you understand that? How do you make sense of something like that? My mother was supposed to be here. It wasn’t supposed to be her. She’s supposed to help me get ready for my wedding day and be there when I have my first child. She’s never going to see Julia graduate from High School…

At 11:20 the doctor came in and told my father that my mother was brain-dead and her heart was still struggling. 10 minutes later my father took her off the respirator.

15 minutes later she died.

Clinical. Cold. My heart hurts so much sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I thought my heart was broken when Mike and I broke up but it was nothing… absolutely nothing compared to this. My mother was my best friend. I could tell her anything. I really honestly don’t know what I’m going to do without her.

My father was actually being decent until Thursday. After the funeral and everything was over. That’s when he started calling his girlfriend again.

He says “I want you to tell me everything like you did Mom. Don’t hide anything from me.”

When I ask who he’s talking to: “No one… just a friend from work.”

Well, fuck that. If I’m supposed to be telling YOU everything you’d better damn well be telling me everything too you motherfucker.

I hate him so much. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help it. After all these years he’s NOW trying to step up and be a father but he can’t even do that right. He’s still on the fucking drugs and he still drinks his liquor straight out of the bottle with no mixers.

I think about Julia now and how much she’s going to resent me. Everyone says she won’t but she will. She’s going to end up resenting me because I have to step up and take on the Mother role. But I’m not her mother. I’m not… and she’s going to hate me for it.

And the house. Shit. That house is so big and I’m going to have to keep it clean on top of getting Julia ready for school and working and… I don’t know how I’m going to do it all. I… I don’t know how I’m going to be able to do it all and still stay sane.

I’m just… I’m broken. I’m broken and right now I feel like nothing will ever be right again. My Mom isn’t here to bandage the boo-boos and make sure that everything is ok. And I miss her so much. I miss her so much sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes, at night especially, it feels like the walls are closing in around me.

I don’t want to be my father’s babysitter. I don’t want to listen to him moan about how much he misses Momma and then watch as he goes to call his girlfriend. I don’t want to even look at him. I don’t want to be in the same room with him. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to breathe the same air he breathes. I can’t stand it when he hugs me goodnight. I want to push him away.

It’s not right. It’s NOT RIGHT. I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t resent him for being there but I DO. I resent him. I resent the fact that he’s the one I have to talk to now and not my Mom. I resent that he’s always trying to look so big and fucking bad… he’s talking of trading my Mom’s car in for a sports car because that’s what they had before I was born and she would “Want him to have one.”

FUCK THAT. What she would want is for him to wise the fuck up and stop acting like a fucking teenager.

He keeps talking about the changes in the house he wants to make. All this shit… these persian rugs and granite countertops and paintings on the walls that he says My Mom wanted. She never wanted any of that shit. She liked the house the way it was. All the changes he wants? He wants to make them to impress someone. Saturday? We have that German Shorthaired Pointer, Vegas, right? Vegas ate the transmission out of his ATV and it was in the shop. It was a two-seater and Mom loved taking rides in it on Sunday afternoons. They called to say it was ready so he went to pick it up. He came back with a big, green four-wheeler. He says he wants to teach Julia how to drive. JULIA MY SISTER WHO HE WON’T EVEN PUT ON HIS FUCKING MEDICAL INSURANCE BECAUSE IT WOULD COST TOO MUCH. Oh, you think I kid? She’s 12… 13 in two weeks and he won’t put her on his medical insurance. He’s got this big piece of machinery that he wants to let her DRIVE and she doesn’t even have insurance. He asked ME to see if I can get her on MY insurance.

I just… I HATE HIM. I hate him so much. I’ve got to stay in the house for Julia’s sake but right now? All I want to do is to run as far away as humanly possible. I want to hop on a plane and get away.

But I can’t. I can’t leave Julia.

Shit.

Shit.

Anyway. I should go now. It’s 8:30 and I have to put on my make-up before work starts.

*hugs to everyone* Thank you all so much for your kind words of support. They meant so much. You have no idea.

I’ll try to make it around to everyone’s diaries and catch up over the next few days but if I don’t… I love you guys.