Dealing With the Truth?

I have my days and nights mixed up. I fall asleep early, then wake up at ungodly hours of the wee morning, unable to go back to sleep. I stay in bed and continue to try to drop back off, but am often unsuccessful until almost time to get up. THEN I fall asleep for a couple of hours. And, of course, because I was up so early, I am tired and fall asleep early...and the whole cycle starts over again. I am, unfortunately, intimately familiar with late-night television programming...and it ain't good!

The mother of one of my good friends has died. I will be going to the visitation tomorrow evening. Haven't decided about the actual funeral. Don't know how well I can handle it. Bill (my friend) and two of his four siblings are blind, due to an inherited condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. In spite of that, they have all taken turns staying with their mother at the end of her long illness, at home. Mercifully, she died in her sleep. God bless them all for their faithfulness to her.

I have done a load of dishes today and three loads of laundry, so far. (Only one load left.) Since the temperature outside has been okay, I should have been outside raking leaves, but since they are still coming down, it seems futile. My productivity is somewhat down recently, but I try to keep situations under control, one step at a time.

My big issue these days is depression. I did so look forward to retirement. Less stress. More time to get things done. Then there was the heart attack on August 1st. I understood the risks and I understood the needed changes in lifestyle. What I didn't understand was the depression that would follow. When the HA happened, there was a feeling of helplessness. Lying on the gurney in the ambulance, I was aware that my heart was doing weird things and I had absolutely no control over it. I spent four days in the hospital, totally at everyone's mercy. Two of those days only happened because my heartbeat was so stable by the time I got there that hospital personnel saw no need to call someone in to do the angiogram/stent. I was lucky?

Two years before, I had a ruptured brain aneurysm. Coming out of that without disability was "lucky". I felt blessed. After the heart attack, however, I felt cursed. I was suddenly strapped to six pills a day...cardiac rehab...no salt...no fat... What was I to eat? Processed foods are supposedly out. Whatever. No one ever explained to me that there would be depression about getting old and sick after so many years of so much activity. But I still had my family to do for...my daughter and my grandchildren gave me purpose. Then all of that suddenly ended. At the end of September, custody of my grandchildren was given to their father...and now my daughter is moving to California. Thirty years of faithfulness to her and seven years of faithfulness to my grandchildren has been rewarded with loneliness.

You know what is unfair about all of this (aside from the obvious)? ALL of my life, I have lived with what I would describe as "no regrets". I have always given the best I had to everyone I loved so that I wouldn't die thinking I could have done better. I did the best I could...more than the best I could...and now face the ultimate end alone. My daughter won't talk to me...hides from me online...so she can do what she does without having to deal with me. It's pretty difficult to think about the holidays for the children....and me.

When Megan showed up unannounced on my doorstep with the kids, never to return to her marriage, I did what I had to do. I wept because I knew how much the children loved their yard in Muncie, but we made do. We spent tens of thousands of dollars to make the house acceptable for the children and our circumstances. Everything was going well until the emergence of Meg's relationship with Denis. She denies it, but I watched it all transpire.

So what is the purpose of doing too much so there will be no regrets? Doesn't matter now. I am trying to deal with the truth, even though I hate it. I can't change it or fix it. All I want out of life right now is one day...ONE day...without tears.

I pray to God that my grandchildren will someday come to understand why their mother chose to give them up. I never will.