h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In a couple of weeks, April 18, it will be the 20th anniversary of my father's death.

I vividly remember the day he died. The school bus stopped across the highway. Even the bus driver noticed the extra cars in front of our house. My uncle grabbed me in front of the house and gave me a big hug. Then, he shoved me into the kitchen, while he waited outside. I remember standing in the kitchen while my older brother told me what had happened. I was still wearing my school uniform. All I could say was "At least, he isn't suffering any more.". My sister was already making funeral arrangements on the phone. My guess is if she had stopped moving, she'd have fallen apart. So, there it was one month before I was to finish high school and my dad would never see my diploma. I was barely 17 on that sunny spring day that had started so nicely only 9 hours earlier.

Because of a sudden heart attack, Dad was not suffering any more with the Pneumonia he had developed over two months before. He had been in the hospital for a month as it was. Dad was no longer suffering from the Parkinson's Disease he had been diagnosed with when I was 11. And, he was no longer having to suffer life with my mother.

Life with my mother was not pleasant. It took the doctors thirty years to diagnose what she really had. Until then, it was "high strung" or "a bit nervous" which they only treated with an ever increasing amount of tranquilizers. Sooner or later, she would refuse to take the medication and it would start all over again. First the irritability, delusions, then paranoid behavior, and psychotic episodes which got more dangerous as time progressed. My mother died in July of 2002.

I reconciled a lot of my past issues over the years. It was a concious choice when I packed to leave home at the age of 18 to no longer let my mother's illness make me sick. I packed my clothes, my stereo, some books, took the dog and left the baggage of living with my mother. Unfortunately, not everyone involved has done the same. For the past several months, these events from decades ago have been brought up, chewed up and gone over many times, even though everyone else involved is dead. I see no need to dredge it up to look for answers that aren't there.

It would be an entirely different matter if I thought there was some point to asking: Why did my mother get an illness that is supposed to have odds of 1 in 100,000? Why did she have two miscarriages and not miscarry me, even though she tried? Why did it take the doctors so many decades to figure out which blood test might provide a real answer?

Someone asked me a couple of months ago what the worst thing was that she ever did. Does it really matter?

Thank you.

I'm not broken up over what happened. Everybody has something to deal with and crosses to bear.

What I am is fed up with the pointless dredging up and re hashing of things from decades ago.

That anger that makes people do that

Any suggestion on how to get rid of that anger?

I ran out of suggestions after writing, drawing, reading about those deadly emotions, a physical hobby, and see a therapist.

no sorry, if they won't let go of it, no-one can make them

I can't seem to get the point across that they are only hurting themselves. Well that, and really making me angry with them.

you'll have to just let them vent I'm afraid

They need to be paying a therapist to listen to them vent instead of phoning me weekly to go over the same old stuff without any kind of resolution.

It was the "I don't care if helps or not." part that made me angry. Let me get this straight, you don't care if it's solved, but I'm supposed to?

It would be a completely different story if I thought they were healing. Instead, they are only picking at an old wound.

*slides in and takes a seat near the back*

Hello, make yourself comfortable.

I know it isn't the most cheery topic. Sometimes, things just need to be said.

Yup. And sometimes you just need another person to listen.

True. Thanks for listening.

I did waffle about posting the first bit. Then I thought that maybe it will help someone else who has been there as well. Whether it's the having all this kind of stuff happen to them, the not resolving stuff, or even the part about dealing with someone who has unresolved issues.

I would say that there are an alwful lot of people with unresloved issues

I agree.

The problem is letting those unresolved issues get in the way of being content.

Right. And unwittingly allowing other people's issues to become your issues.

That's what I'm trying to avoid.

I'm not always successfull, but I am getting better about dealing with it.

<delurks from the <./>Info</.> page of recent days, ...

waggles at Cal, ...

ponders how, or if to comment, just how true post #16 is ...

Nick,

I don't see why you would post here, in my journal, since the last thing you emailed me was full of false accusations and nasty comments.

Furthermore, where I come from it's rude to barge into a serious conversation about a serious subject, to add flippant remarks.

Being that the first post was about my family, I find it extraordinarily rude.

Hi, Evangeline/

Long time no see.

My uncle's first wife had a terrible time with her authoritarian father (it's why, as soon as she was eighteen, she married my uncle..). She went through years of psychotherapy, and finally reached a point where she could put herself in her father's shoes and see him as just a regular person who had a tough load of burdens to carry. She came out of it pretty well.

I am thinking that these other people that keep trying to dredge up the past with you are somehow stranded in a prison of a sort, which they can't break out of. Your mother was more than just your mother. She was an ordinary person whom everyone outside of your family had to deal with without any special relationship to. How about a reality check? What did nonrelatives think of her?

Oh, and one more thing: I'm so proud of you for getting to a place where you can deal with these issues. Your example may still be the best hope you have of leading the others out of their prison.