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Apr. 20th, 2020 10:21 pmWell, logging back in for other reasons and I've been meaning to make a post. Well, meaning to try to post at all, but a specific thought I keep coming back to.
My grandmother died right before this all got going. The whole thing felt distant - she'd been "going to die" for a couple decades now, her memory's been gone for years, and we never had much in common. I was upset but I kept waiting for it to hit properly. Worrying it might suddenly hit at a bad time, even, just out of the blue. The wake was bad, but it was a lot worse for my brother so I was distracted distracting him, and some distant cousins talked a bit and somehow fell right into how much we both support abortion and the prolifers don't give a fuck about life, and there's something really nice about finding someone agrees with you about the topics no one dares talk about in public.
I was hoping the funeral would mean something, a greater sadness and then coming out the other side, ritual is great, but it was just a bunch of disconnection. The church my grandmother went to, right down the street from her house, was closed during the sex abuse scandal, not because anything bad was happening there but because the property was valuable. So she stopped going rather than travel to a distant one. And the priests she'd known went elsewhere long ago, and the funeral was by someone who'd never met her. I remember my grandmother's church, and even a bit of the priests there, but I don't go to church myself, and with only the ceremony it was all strange and alien.
And now I keep thinking that it's good it happened then. She's been rushed to the hospital a few times before and the last time was particularly fraught and relied on the doctors being really on the ball. And there'd be no way to keep her from getting corona - she ordered all her food delivered and she couldn't remember anything and she couldn't read, and my aunt would've been a mess worrying about her, and when she did get it my uncle would blame my aunt. Or while everyone was worried about that she'd have gotten the regular flu, like she did, only there wouldn't be the resources to treat her. And she'd have died and all the elderly friends and family wouldn't have been able to have a funeral.
And how all that's true for so many other people. This is just...the disruption, not just the deaths but every way it spreads outward.
I was also planning to kill my cat, which is terribly upsetting on the basis of it being a decision made without any clear idea of if it's actually the right thing to do. We decided to wait for the ground to warm and then all this mess put it off, and now she seems like she might not be miserable on balance so I won't again. I really hope she dies on her own. For most of my life cats just died but the last two in a row had to be killed. More unambiguously than this, but also in agony which is what I want to avoid with her.
If this all sounds pretty depressing, this isn't constantly on my mind, just a couple thoughts that tie up.
My grandmother died right before this all got going. The whole thing felt distant - she'd been "going to die" for a couple decades now, her memory's been gone for years, and we never had much in common. I was upset but I kept waiting for it to hit properly. Worrying it might suddenly hit at a bad time, even, just out of the blue. The wake was bad, but it was a lot worse for my brother so I was distracted distracting him, and some distant cousins talked a bit and somehow fell right into how much we both support abortion and the prolifers don't give a fuck about life, and there's something really nice about finding someone agrees with you about the topics no one dares talk about in public.
I was hoping the funeral would mean something, a greater sadness and then coming out the other side, ritual is great, but it was just a bunch of disconnection. The church my grandmother went to, right down the street from her house, was closed during the sex abuse scandal, not because anything bad was happening there but because the property was valuable. So she stopped going rather than travel to a distant one. And the priests she'd known went elsewhere long ago, and the funeral was by someone who'd never met her. I remember my grandmother's church, and even a bit of the priests there, but I don't go to church myself, and with only the ceremony it was all strange and alien.
And now I keep thinking that it's good it happened then. She's been rushed to the hospital a few times before and the last time was particularly fraught and relied on the doctors being really on the ball. And there'd be no way to keep her from getting corona - she ordered all her food delivered and she couldn't remember anything and she couldn't read, and my aunt would've been a mess worrying about her, and when she did get it my uncle would blame my aunt. Or while everyone was worried about that she'd have gotten the regular flu, like she did, only there wouldn't be the resources to treat her. And she'd have died and all the elderly friends and family wouldn't have been able to have a funeral.
And how all that's true for so many other people. This is just...the disruption, not just the deaths but every way it spreads outward.
I was also planning to kill my cat, which is terribly upsetting on the basis of it being a decision made without any clear idea of if it's actually the right thing to do. We decided to wait for the ground to warm and then all this mess put it off, and now she seems like she might not be miserable on balance so I won't again. I really hope she dies on her own. For most of my life cats just died but the last two in a row had to be killed. More unambiguously than this, but also in agony which is what I want to avoid with her.
If this all sounds pretty depressing, this isn't constantly on my mind, just a couple thoughts that tie up.
