mamajoan | Entries tagged with death

Around the age of 4,5,6, it's normal for a kid to go through a period of intense curiosity about death. Isaac is definitely in that phase now. He has been asking a lot of questions about death, mostly fairly easy to answer ("when will you die? when will I die? why do people die when they get old?" etc. -- and from Ruthie, frequently, "how do sharks die?"). Also whenever I tell him or Ruthie not to do something, he usually says "will it make me die?"

There are also the questions like, "What if this building [that we're standing next to] fell down?" or "What if that airplane landed on us?" I usually reply, "Then we would die. But that's not going to happen." Well, in the building case I said that we would hear and see it starting to fall, and we would run away.

Ruthie likes to do this highly annoying thing where she climbs on my back and puts her arms around my neck and chokes me. One of the first few times she did it, I was groaning and telling her to stop, and I foolishly said "you're killing me," in jest, but of course Isaac didn't realize I was joking so he got very concerned. Now every time Ruthie does that, he goes, "Stop it Ruthie! She's going to die!" I have attempted to explain that I'm not really going to die from Ruthie choking me, but he still gets anxious about it.

( this one time Isaac thought I was dead... )

Ruthie, btw, also went through a phase recently where she was obsessed/concerned with the idea of being left alone. I'm wondering if one time when the babysitter was here (while I was at chorus rehearsal) maybe Ruthie came out of her bedroom and couldn't find the babysitter, and thus got it into her head that Olivia (the sitter) was leaving our house after putting Ruthie to bed. She asked me repeatedly, "What if you and gramma and Olivia went away?" I told her over and over again that this isn't going to happen, there will always be a grownup in the house. Not sure whether that really sank in, but she seems to have stopped talking about that, anyway.

Then yesterday in the car:
Isaac: "How many years will there be?"
me: "Until what?"
Isaac: "until the earth dies."
me: "oh, a lot! Millions and millions."
Isaac: "Oh. ...How does the earth die?"
me: "Well, eventually the sun will start to get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then it will get so hot on the earth that everything will burn up."
Isaac: "Oh. But that's okay, because we'll be dead by then already."
me: "yes, we will."
Isaac: "What if there are other people on earth when that happens?"
me: "well, hopefully they will have time to make a spaceship and get away before the earth burns up."
Isaac: "Oh."

and a little while later...
Isaac: "When was the big bang?"
me: (a quick google to refresh memory) "About 13 billion years ago."
Isaac: "Can I see it?"
me: "eh?"
Isaac: "Can we go on YouTube? I want to see a video of the Big Bang."
me: (internal rotfl) "Umm...well, there's no video of it, because there were no people around back then."
Isaac: "Let's just try."

So I went on YouTube and searched on "big bang" and got, of course, some episodes of that sitcom, and some songs by a band of that name; but did also find an educational "origins of the universe" video, which talked about how scientists throughout history have used observable phenomena to calculate the earth's diameter, the distance of various astronomical objects, and so forth. It was about nine minutes long and Isaac was riveted to it the entire time. Ruthie on the other hand just kept saying "But where's the big bang? I want to see the big bang!" and then broke down crying when I told her we can't watch a video of the Big Bang. LOL!!!

Then this morning it was back to "Is Aunt Rae dead?" Aunt Rae is my great-aunt who is 92 and who, since we went to her 90th birthday party, is apparently the epitome of "old" in Isaac's mind. And no, she is not dead yet.

Ruthie, btw, has also started asking some "what if" questions, which can be confusing because she says "once" when she means "what if." So for example,

Ruthie: "Once a shark came in our house and ate all our food!"
Me: "Well, then we'd have to go to the store and get more food. But that wouldn't really happen."
Isaac: "Yeah, because the shark would die when it got out of the water."
Me: "Yeah, and also it wouldn't be able to open our fridge, because it doesn't have hands."

The other day Ruthie told me this long and involved story about a shark coming into her bedroom and biting her on the head. I'm wondering whether this was actually a dream that she had? I'm also wondering what the heck it is with her and sharks! LOL.

Current Mood: enthralled

Every morning after we drop off Isaac at school, Ruthie and I get back into the car to take her to daycare. And every morning, she puts her stuffed bear into Isaac's carseat and insists on buckling him in. So he'll be safe, don'tcha know. This morning, for the first time, we forgot to unbuckle Blue Bear when we arrived at daycare; so when I got back home, I noticed him still sitting in Isaac's seat, safely strapped in. heh. oh well.

Thanks to all for the kind words you posted about my grandmother's death last week. I appreciate them. I have been pondering what memories I have of her that I can share with my kids, but unfortunately most of the ones I've come up with are incidents where she forgot things or got confused and so forth - this is a side effect of the fact that she had been in mental decline for most of my adult life. Any childhood memories that I have of her are only fuzzy and indistinct. The whole thing is making me all the more glad that my kids have so much closer a relationship with their grandma.

Didja notice the part up above about how I came back home after dropping Ruthie off at daycare? Yeah, that would be the thing I posted about last week under friends-lock. To wit, that I got laid off a week and a half ago now. I was keeping it locked last week for various reasons but now am letting the proverbial feline out of the containment vessel.

It has certainly not been the best couple of weeks. In fact, I'd have to say that this period of time is in close contention for the worse couple weeks of my life. Let's examine the candidates:

Early to mid-August, 2006: Started new job; emergency gall-bladder surgery requiring six days in hospital; laid off.
Mid- to late October, 2008: Laid off; grandma died; car needed $1300 of repairs.

It's a pretty close race there, people. Okay, and now I need to stop with the election metaphor because it's giving me hives. I don't even want to talk about tomorrow. I'm developing an ulcer as we speak.

Anyway, my point being that I got laid off and it sucks and I'm definitely starting to panic. Hopefully I will very soon find out how much I'm going to get from unemployment, and then I'll have more of an idea where I stand and can start ~~freaking out~~ dealing with things for real. Meanwhile, I'm desultorily checking job listings, emailing people, and just trying to hold it all together. Barely. By the tips of my fingers....

Current Mood: anxious

So, my grandmother died on Monday. This was not unexpected. She had Alzheimer's and had been "gone" mentally for quite a few years. Over the past month or two, her physical condition deteriorated pretty fast. My mom flew out to LA (where grandma lived with my uncle) last week, and she and her brother mutually decided to stop trying to treat grandma, just give her morphine to keep her out of discomfort. That was Friday. She hung on till Monday morning, which I'm sure was probably among the longest three days of my mom's life.

Anyway, so grandma is gone now and I think the main emotion we all feel is relief. She was 94 and her time had come. Not that we aren't sad, of course, but it's for the best.

Meanwhile my poor mom is totally stressed and trying to help her brother deal with all the administrivia of death and so forth. It sucks that she had only been back from her vacation for a week before all this happened. She's planning to come back the end of this week, but who knows how long it'll take her to recover from the emotional stuff, not to mention the effects of barely sleeping while holding vigil over grandma -- and let's not even talk about the jetlag!

In other sucktastic news, yesterday my car started making a horrible grinding noise, and long story short, it needs $1500 of repairs. I am sunk in the pit of despair. If you read my friends-locked update from the other day, you know the whole story. Otherwise, just suffice it to say that in no way can I afford this right now. :(

Current Mood: gloomy

so yesterday was irritating, after the first post that I made, Ruthie continued to not nap for basically the whole rest of the day, and was extremely cranky/fussy because of it. The less said about that the better, I guess. ah well

In other news, this afternoon I'm going to the memorial service for that ex-coworker who died a couple weeks ago. I'm kind of dreading it. I realized that I've not ever actually been to a memorial/funeral/anything like that, except the one for my grandfather which doesn't really count since I was only what, 15. So, I'll probably bawl a lot, I guess. I don't know. I wasn't exactly best friends with Mike or anything, but I knew him fairly well and he was a great guy so it will definitely be hard.

I just hope the thing isn't too overly-religious such as to make me cringe. Mike wasn't very religious that I could see, but that doesn't necessarily seem to have anything to do with anything. We shall see.

Meanwhile I'm a bit worried about leaving the kids w/my mom, because she has injured her foot and it gives her a lot of pain if she does too much carrying (i.e., Ruthie). So send her pain-free vibes if you can.

OK, time to go figure out what to wear.

edit I found Mike's obit online: here I'm not sure why it says he was "working toward" becoming a US citizen; I thought he already had completed that process, but maybe I'm wrong.

Current Mood: anxious

Still here, just not much going on that merits posting about. The usual. Starting to get ready for Isaac's party. Work, kids, not enough sleep, etc., you know.

My sore throat never turned into strep, but it hasn't really gone away either. It's getting better, but verrrrrrrrrrry slowly.

( random blather about the kids )

Tonight we get our first CSA distribution ("we" being me and mom and

sandykidd and

metafrantic -- we are all splitting it). I am excited! Even though

gosling and

ceo got it last night and said that it was all enormous bunches of leafy greens. What are we going to do with huge quantities of leafy greens? I guess we'll be eating a lot of salad this week. heh.

Re: my ex-coworker who died. Still kind of absorbing that. Isn't it "funny" how death can get in under your skin and pop out at you in unexpected ways/times. It hits me particularly in this case because his son was almost the same age as Isaac. Sometimes I try to envision Isaac having to deal with my death and I have to do the mental equivalent of quickly averting my eyes, because it hurts too much to contemplate.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: office

I always feel weird writing the next post after one about a death (or similar). It's like, one post of omg someone died, and then right back into whee, it's raining, I had pizza for lunch. But what else can one do?

The loss of

thamiris continues to sting and probably will for quite some time. As others have said, we women can take this as an opportunity to remind ourselves and each other of how important it is to stay on top of our breast health. Tham never had routine screening mammograms; maybe if she had done, she'd still be with us today. Don't let that be you. Do your self-exams. Schedule your mammogram. Or at least talk to your doctor about whether you need one. Do it now, not "next week," not "soon." Now. 'K? 'K.

In more mundane news, it is raining; I was soaked up to the knees by the time I got us home. There was hail involved too. Well, this oughta net us some damn good flowers. Isaac is very excited that tomorrow is gramma's birthday, and that on Saturday we're taking her and him to the chocolate buffet. Ruthie fell asleep before Isaac for the second night in a row which has me disgruntled, as does my nagging feeling that I should have tried harder (i.e. at all) to get her used to

sandykidd's place sooner since that'll be her new daily haunt starting Monday. sigh. bad mama.

Oh, and I'm still destitute. Yep, that's about the size of it. Life around here. It's a chuckle a second I tell ya.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: home, nursing

I just got home, all fired up with my work- and life-related frustrations and mentally composing an LJ post to get it all out of me. And opened up my flist to see many of you putting out the word about the untimely death of

thamiris. Oh my god. I can hardly believe it through the tears.

I didn't know Tham terribly well, but well enough to adore her. She was a fabulous woman, with a wit and intelligence and a way with words to which I can only forlornly aspire. I will miss her so much. So much.