Death in the Family

What a few days.  Carolyn Cruse, Isaiah's grandmother, my husband's ex, and  my friend, died Monday morning at 6:30 a.m.  Candace called us in a panic, paramedics had just arrived and although she hoped not, she knew her Mom was dead.  

Carolyn, Virgil and I raised Isaiah together for many years.  It was a long, painful, and litigeous road, but in the end, we werre friends and truly cared about one another.  Last summer she spent most of the time in a and out of the hospital with respiratory problems, dying and being resuscitated several times.  We spoke of a dream she had in which she visited all her children, and being assured that they would be ok, was ready to die, and then saw Isaiah in the path blocking her way.  He said he wasn't ready for her to go.  So she stayed.  She said that she felt incredible love and a sense of well being, and after the dream she was not afraid of death. 

So she soldiered on, and we became friends.  I would call her, we discussed how frightening it was to rely on a tube for breathing, and she asked to speak to me when her most recent MD told her she would never be able to take it.  I'd take the kids over, and we would smile and laugh at them.    Isaiah worried about her.  I was alone with him when I told him she had died.   He wailed and sobbed and I just held him.  He told me he felt like all the happiness had gone out of his life, and everything was sad.  I just held him - a boy who has lost so much already. 

As the relatives began to arrive, I just made myself useful.  Made a pasta chicken salad the first day so there was something to eat, chilled it, water, soda.  I asked what  people needed and kept busy.   On one occasion today, I felt her laughing down at the chaos. 

Now I feel overwhelmed.  Too many people, too much dysfunction, too much noise.  I need to work tomorrow, do a retreat next week, get charged for it all.  Too many energy vampires.  Isaiah knows he can rely on me, I told him if he needed time away,he could ask.  Right now everyone is at his grandma's house and he is feeling like his home has been invaded.  The loss will sink in when everyone is gone, and he and his Mom are alone there.  I will be there for him.