Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Therapy

I walked out of my therapy session this morning. As I came down the stairs there was a Fedex guy staring intently at the office directory. He looked up at me and I expected him to say, "Do you know where ____'s office is?" but instead he said, "You look just like your mom."

SUCKER PUNCH!

Can I go in and ask for another hour? Probably not. I smiled and said, "How do you know my mom?" Stupid. Slow thinking. The correct question would have been "How did you know my mom?" because I couldn't tell if he actually knew that she died, especially with that big smile on his face. (Aside-as politically correct as it may be, I consciously avoid using terms like 'passed away.' in reference to my mom. She certainly didn't do anything remotely passive in regards to her dying, unless you count the ever present denial...). Turned out he knew her from Jefferson, from around, from one of her ex boyfriends.

"Do you work here?"

No, I'm in therapy because my mom's dead.

"No, I just had an appointment."

I could've dropped the bomb, but I wasn't up to it and why ruin his day? More importantly, why ruin the $65 dollars I just spent trying to stay sane? I wished him a good day and took my girlfriend's car to the carwash.

2 comments:

Milena said...

I still haven't gotten around to making phone calls to out of town friends I haven't spoken to in a while. I had to make three or four, "Hey there...oh, I'm okay...well, not really...my dad died..." calls and that was my threshold I think. I also opted out of the mass email my office usually puts out announcing dead relatives.

I suppose posting all about it on my blog is hypocritical...

Kronda said...

Not at all. The first rule of grieving, as far as I'm concerned is, YOU FIRST. Do whatever feels right to you to get through it.

It so happened that my mom was a somewhat well known community figure and so I had already spent months managing an email list created just for communicating what was going on with her. Which, believe me was tricky when no one wanted to face the truth.

Anyway, I was spared making a ton of phone calls for the most part and word spread enough that I don't run into too many people who don't know. But when I do, man, talk about akward...

But back to my point which bears repeating: YOU FIRST.