I am having the hardest time focusing on work today. It's terrible. Part of it is because the weather is so flipping beautiful, I just want to be outside basking in it and enjoying a day that isn't full of rain and clouds or snow or arctic air.
I'm also a little tired/sleep-deprived from trying to stay awake for the Tonight Show. What a bust that was.
My mind is also hard to corral ever since I learned about my Aunt Adrianne on Saturday. She has been fighting a stage four cancer reoccurance since fall of 2008. She was initially diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer back in 2002 or 2003 - I think 2002, because that's the summer I was 16 going on 17.
Anywho, she's been fighting for her life for a year and a half now, but it's rapidly gone downhill. She is leaving her third and final treatment in Washington state this week and coming home to Oakland for hospice care. My mom told me to be ready to fly to Oakland this spring for the inevitable, I guess (I can't even bring myself to type the words).
I'm just so thrown by this whole thing with so many emotions. I always thought the five stages of grief were cliche, but it's true. On Saturday I was shocked and openly wept. I just let it out. Last night I was at the gym, and I was irritated with all the little things that were off with my regular routine - like, I lost my normal pen, and my combo lock, and my usual locker(s) were taken, and all of the squat apparatus were taken (which is never the case), and I was just filled with anger. I wanted to throw all of the weights around and make noise and just rage. It was weird.
Today, I am just numb and distracted. I feel like I'm on another planet. I went through my inbox and re-read all the emails Adrianne and I have sent each other, and I'm just thinking about how I failed at keeping in touch, especially as of late. I got really afraid to talk to her, because I just have no experience with this kind of grief/tragedy. I left her a voicemail about a month ago (she didn't answer her phone) because I wanted to say, well, anything I could just to show that I still think about her.
This whole situation is just awful. I feel even worse for everyone else around me, like my mom, who watched her dad die of cancer around the same age Adrianne is. I hate that she has to lose her sister too early, too. I feel awful for my Uncle Kenneth, who is a living saint for being with her all these years and taking such perfect care of her. I wish I could think of the right things to say to my cousin Deidre, who has never had the perfect relationship Adrianne, and is an only child, which means she doesn't have any siblings to share the load with.
I have this morbid curiosity now about what it's going to be like when it happens, I guess because I'm preparing myself for it. It's going to be awful. I just want to go back to the days when we would spend our summers in Santa Cruz or Laguna Beach, and we'd all swim and lay out and stroll the boardwalk without a care in the world (at least, I had no worries, because I was a teen). I want to tag along with her to dance class again, or go to plays with her and Kenneth again. I remember when she took me shopping when I was 13 and I felt so stylish and hip as I let her and the store clerk pick out clothes for me to try.
Ugh, I don't know, I'm just so overwhelmed with confusing feelings - I wish I could just feel acceptance or peace or something less tumultuous. I guess if I'm wishing for things, though, I wish for a miracle.
