Someday I'll be happy again...

Right now I feel like I'll just never see the daylight of pure joy again. I know it's been over a year. I know I need to shake loose and someday I will. Right now, though...everything just feels so overwhelming.

Before Mama passed I never really gave death too much thought. I never really considered all that I have to lose. I'd lost grandpas and an uncle before, so it's not as though I didn't have a concept of loss. And believe me, I loved those grandpas and that uncle deeply but the loss wasn't such a dramatically monumental shift. They weren't part of my daily life. They didn't shape me to my core. Losing Mama and the constancy of her in my life ripped my heart to shreds. But more than that, as I've settled into the grief it's instilled this terrible fear in me. I literally live in fear of losing my dad. Of losing Libby. Of losing my sisters. Or my nieces. 

Every time my dad doesn't answer a text right away or doesn't come to the door before I can get out of my car I fear the worst. The other day he'd texted me saying that he was grilling burgers and would bring me one sometime after five o'clock. When ten after six rolled around and I hadn't seen or heard from him I started to worry. Should I text him and check on him? Should I just drive down there? Not because I was hungry but because what if something had happened to him? 

Sunday afternoon I took lunch to his house. He normally hears me drive up and comes out to help me bring it in but he didn't. And then when I got to the door it was locked. It's never locked when he knows I'm coming. My heart dropped to my stomach thinking something must be wrong. 

When I found out that Ray Liotta, an actor my dad's age, died in his sleep recently I full on cried. Not because I'm mourning Ray Liotta but because he's my dad's age, in seemingly good health and he just up and died in his sleep and here my dad is with leukemia, afib, heart disease, diabetes, and a litany of other health problems that feel like a ticking time bomb just waiting to completely wreck me.

And I worry that I'm failing him somehow. Like, I could do more to take care of him and make his life easier. Cook for him. Spend more time with him. Encourage him to go places and see his friends. Encourage him more to slow down on all the things he thinks he has to do. Take more responsibility for the things he thinks he has to do for me. 

Libby's 16th birthday is this month. She's deaf and partially blind and has developed k-9 dementia (yes, it's a thing) so every day when I come home from work, if she doesn't greet me at the door I fear walking in to find her gone. She stopped eating regularly for a couple of months and I stayed in tears, praying. She's back to eating normally now but I feel this morbid sense of the clock running out on my time with her. And to make it all the worse, the dementia has completely changed her personality. She's no longer the silly, affectionate baby she always was. She paces the floor. She is obsessed with treats. She is on medication to control her bladder. She won't sleep in her crate anymore so I let her sleep with me except she has started sleeping on the floor in short increments, waking me up several times during the night which makes me irritable but then guilty for being irritable. I miss my snuggle bug who gave me kisses but I would rather have her this way than not at all.

And I worry that I'm not doing all that could to make her life easier. I don't take her outside for long enough periods of time. I don't let her sniff every blade of grass. I'm too distracted when we're together to give her the attention she deserves. I'm not always patient with her when she gets under my feet or wakes me up for the third time in an hour. 

A woman I grew up with died of pneumonia a couple of months ago. She was in her early 50's and had four kids and a husband. She was otherwise healthy and freaking pneumonia took her. So when Sis2 got sick with a bad cold and cough last week I begged her to just go the doctor because what if it turned into something worse? She did finally go and it was an ear infection and sinus infection so she took meds and is on the mend, thank God. 

I spend as much time with my dad as I can at the detriment of my already limited social life. I take Libby with me whenever/wherever I can even if it isn't convenient. I sacrifice my coveted alone time for my nieces, nephew, and sisters whenever I can because the kids are growing up so fast and what if my time with them is limited? 

I spend mindless hours on social media just to distract myself from the fears and the morbid thoughts but it only works for so long. I feel as though I'm just dragging around this burden of pre-grief that I can't seem to shake loose from. 

I have moments of joy, yes. I can't say that I don't. But joy is always tinged with fear and sadness. I probably need therapy but I can't afford it and don't really know if it would help anyway. I can't really talk to anyone about any of this because my friends are too uncomfortable with my grief/depression. Believe me, I've tried talking to them about it but they either change the subject or turn the topic to their own families/problems. I talk to my sisters as much as I can but they are battling their own grief and personal problems. So I just walk around carrying this all on my own. Sometimes I feel like even God just wishes I'd get over it and get on with my life. I have moments of feeling Him but I think my heart has just closed itself off from Him. He is the one, after all, that holds all this in His hands. He knows all about my next loss already and while I know He prepared me for so much with Mama's illness, He didn't prepare me at all for losing her and all that that would mean and I guess a part of me is still a little mad about it all.

I know the light will come back someday. It can't stay dark forever, can it? And I know it isn't fair to myself or my family to grieve them all before they're even gone. At some point I am going to have to figure out how to love and appreciate them and not live in fear of losing them. 

But all I want to do now is just curl up in the bed and pretend it's 2019 and all is right in the world.

Is this normal? Or am I just a special case of wackadoodle?