I’m fine

My sister Donna died 4 years ago. It was unexpected and sad - she had been very important to me in my childhood and young adulthood, though we had grown apart in more recent years. Sunday, Daughter Erin and I went to Pacifica to meet my nieces for lunch and to scatter my sister’s ashes in the ocean. It was a beautiful day, a little sad, I cried. And then we went home.

People worried about me because of course one loss calls up feelings from other losses, but I kept telling everyone that I felt okay. The caveat is that my feelings tend to catch up with me several days after the hard thing. I kept checking with myself: how do you feel? I feel okay.

Monday I had a couple of errands to run and I still felt okay. Then this afternoon I gathered up my things and when I went out to the car I realized I didn’t have my keys. Thinking I had left them on the table where they ALWAYS sit, I went back in to get them. No keys on the table. I went upstairs to see if I had left them on the bathroom counter - sometimes when I empty my pockets I put things on the counter. I’d never left my keys there before, but…. No keys. So I thought, maybe I left them in my pants pocket. My pants were in the dryer, but worth a try. No keys. So I went back out to the car and they were in the ignition - apparently I didn’t bring them in when I got home the day before. I haven’t done that since Randy’s transplant when I was so stressed out that I couldn’t remember anything. Frustrating, but at least I was on my way.

After my pilates class I headed home and when I got here I realized that I hadn’t shut the garage door, a pretty much automatic thing. I haven’t done that since we first moved here and I was still figuring out the vagaries of the remote control.

And there you go - grief overload. I feel fine but my focus is shot.