My eye is healing fairly quickly, it seems. I took the patch off last night after it got dark, and my eye is no longer sensitive to light or painful/achy. The vision in it is still a little blurry, but it keeps getting better and better. I haven't worn the patch today, and don't foresee needing it again unless, for some reason, it gets worse. I don't foresee (hah! puns!) that happening, though. Still, I'm okay. I drove us to and from Walmart last night in the dark, and spent 90 minutes in the store shopping with no ill effects or bothersome watering, itching, or pain in the eye. By the time the weekend is over, I would imagine I'll be mostly, if not completely, back to normal 100% vision in the eye. Right now it's at about 90%.
The offending pineapple itself is in the fridge. We didn't have the chance to cut it up and eat it before Daisy left this afternoon. Daisy and I always get much more food than we can eat while she's here, and then I end up slowly eating it over the course of a few days or weeks afterwards. I'm not sure what I'll do with the pineapple. They're a pain in the ass to chop up and do anything with, and unless I cut it up and use it/freeze it this weekend, it'll probably go bad.
Our anniversary (yesterday) was mostly uneventful; it was overshadowed by the death of my sister, obviously, and further aggravated by my injured eye. I was upset and stressed out about both things, and because of that we had a lot of little bitching-back-and-forth arguments and fights which would become briefly heated, then we'd both cool off and make up with one another because we love each other. This happens, obviously, in every relationship, though this time these fights weren't as goofy and trivial as they normally are, because I was (and am) under so much stress, grief, and every other negative emotion you can probably imagine, and though I never take that out on anyone, when I'm upset and my emotions are running high, these emotions...well, they leak out the sides, for lack of better phrasing.
"I should have been more understanding," she told me this morning. "I just honestly didn't realize how it had impacted you. I'm sorry. You usually are wonderful and I was confused. Thanks for clarifying for me again. I love you."
"I know," I said. "It's okay. None of it's your fault, baby. I love you too. Very, very much."
Despite our squabbles, we had a good anniversary. Last night we made spaghetti with gluten-free corn pasta (thank you, Trader Joe's) and then later made the trip to Walmart. She wanted to get me a new computer chair, since the one I'm using now is my wholly uncomfortable spare chair -- my regular chair, my old one, fell apart about a month or two ago. The back separated from the rest of it, rendering it basically useless. We found one in Walmart that I liked, but it was $100, and I told her that I wanted to wait and shop around (also, I didn't want her to spend $100 on me). We came home, played cards, and ate snacks before we went to bed.
Daisy, as mentioned above, didn't know how much my sister's death had affected me. I don't even think I knew myself. I can only process things so much when I'm so detached from them, and the rest of those processes get buried -- pardon the terrible pun. This morning, she asked me about it. She wanted to talk, she wanted me to get my emotions out about it, but there wasn't much else to say. She wanted to see the obituary (that, as mentioned in my last post, I was omitted from), so I showed her. Someone wrote a really sweet, heartfelt story in the paper back home today about how well-liked and respected my sister was in her high school and on her track team, and we both read that as well. I showed Daisy pictures of all of my sisters, both with all of them together, and separate pictures of each of them. I showed her a picture of my father, and talked about how all of us looked either more like him or more like their mother. I think my deceased sister looked like our father a lot more than her mother, and how my older two sisters look more like their mother. Daisy thinks my oldest sister looks a lot like me -- which makes sense because we carry the same genes, obviously -- which is something I never really thought about before. This is the only real, spoken-out-loud "processing" of my sister's death I've been able to do with anyone, aside from a few conversations earlier this week with Parker. I needed it. Neither of us realized that the reason why I was so prone to snapping and under so much stress and squabbling was because I haven't been able to properly process everything. I really can't, not out here. Not here alone.
"Are you more sad that she died, or that you never got to know her and share your life with her?" Daisy asked me.
"I don't know," I said. "I really don't. It's about equal, I suppose. I guess."
I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully answer that question, really. I don't know if there's a true answer for it.
My mother sent me an email last night that said she cried when she heard of my sister's death, and that she's been sad ever since. My mother has no connection to my sister other than the fact that for seven years, she was married to our shared father. There's no relation there for her, no real connection, and my mother (for quite obvious reasons) dislikes my father. Said sister wasn't even born until ten years after they divorced and both family units had moved on. Yet, her death still affected my mother strongly.
"Life is so short," my mother told me. "So live it while you can and be happy."
There's only so much I can do.
This morning -- while Daisy and I slept -- they lowered my sister's body into the ground, into her final resting place. I was not there. I tried not to think about it. Even now, I don't want to think about it. All it does is fill me with sadness, and like it or not, life must go on. Several relatives on both my mother's and father's sides of the family planned to go to the viewing, the funeral, or both. I have not heard from any of them since yesterday afternoon on whether they did or not. I'm not going to bother them. My oldest sister, aside from sharing a photo or two and changing her profile picture to one of her and my dead sister together, has still been silent on social media, and understandably so. I don't think she's read my message I sent her, even. I know she will eventually. Again, I'm not going to bother anyone back home or ask them for details of the funeral, as much as I want to know those details.
I talked to my cousin for a while yesterday morning, and linked her to my last post here so that she could read it and read my thoughts on being omitted from the obituary's "survived by" list. She was appalled and offended on my behalf, seemingly more so than me, even. She has issues with my father anyhow for basically tossing me aside and writing me off so many years ago, and she has better reasons than most for those issues -- when my father's parents (read: my grandparents) died back in the 70s, when my father was in high school, he had nowhere to go, so my aunt and uncle, who were older than my father and said cousin's parents, took him in and gave him somewhere to live. I still don't know the circumstances of my grandmother's death or when it happened (I've tried to find records or get accounts from family members for years), but I know my grandfather committed suicide -- he killed himself in 1974. My father told me that himself in the only conversation the two of us have ever had as adults, back in 2006 via instant message before I moved to the midwest.
"I know for a fact [oldest sister] would never omit you," said my cousin, when I'd asked if she knew who wrote the obituary.
"I know that too," I replied. "If if was [middle sister] I'd understand it as a genuine oversight, because while she knows I'm out there, we haven't really spoken since she was very young."
Perhaps I'll eventually find out who wrote it, perhaps I won't. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. My sister's still dead, she's still in the ground. Nothing changes anything.
Daisy, of course, has done the best she can to try to comfort me in all ways, but seems lost, and I don't blame her. I wouldn't know how to fully comfort someone in this sort of situation, either. Daisy grew up with her sisters -- they were, are, and will always be a huge part of her life, and I love that when I marry her, I'll gain two more sisters as well. But, try as she might, she can't fully comprehend what it's like to be separated from a large chunk of family and then to lose one of them, especially a sibling, before even getting to know said sibling. She's doing all she can to support me, even if I'm stressed and snapping at her and occasionally unintentionally mean, and I appreciate that. She loves me and just wants me to feel better. I never take my relationship with Daisy for granted and never will.
Through all of this, I will again remind you that aside from some cousins, aunts, and other relatives back home, I've been mostly in the dark about everything going on. My father has not attempted to contact me, of course, nor do I expect him to -- and if he wanted to, it would be painfully easy to do so. I have my oldest sister's number in my phone, though I don't know if she has mine, and if he truly wanted to reach out to me, all he'd have to do would be to ask said sister, or one of my cousins or aunts or whoever is there who actually cares about me, for my contact information. Most -- if not all -- of them can reach me very quickly and easily. Am I angered by the fact that he hasn't reached out? Psh. No. It's par for the course and exactly what I expected out of him. And, as I mentioned before, I should be the last thing on his mind right now anyway. My guess is that he's probably not thought about me at all.
I spent some time with Daisy this morning and talked with her about everything, including this and including our squabbling, trying to put things into perspective and trying to get as much time together as we could before she had to go home. She goes back to work tonight, after all. I fed her coffee and waffles and stroked her hair, cuddling with her on the couch. It's been a terrible, horrible week and I just wanted peace. Of course I'm hurting inside. My eye is injured. The world won't stop, nor will my responsibilities and duties, and I so desperately want it to so I'm able to breathe.
It can't be helped. No matter what happens, no matter how many eyes get injured or who dies, life goes on. Nothing stops. Nothing ever does.
Daisy left for home around 1PM. She couldn't leave much later than that, because in addition to everything else going on, not only is her oldest sister coming into town this afternoon, but today the weather forecasters are on high alert because it's the only time since the year 2000 that they've been able to predict with "almost pinpoint certainty" that there are going to be terrible thunderstorms and possible big-time, damaging tornadoes throughout most of the entire midwest this afternoon and evening, and she needs to get home ASAP where it's safe and where, if those storms and tornadoes hit, she won't be stranded in Kansas unable to be with her family or unable to go to work.
Now, mind you, one couldn't tell this now by looking outside. We're in the middle of another heat wave this week -- it's 88 right now, with lots of sun and fluffy clouds. It's gorgeous outside, except for the heat. There's nothing on the radar anywhere around me, and it's 2:30 PM. I hate that fear-mongering weather shit -- the last time they called for godawful storms and possible tornadoes here, it rained for about an hour and hailed little, tiny balls of hail for about ten minutes...and then did nothing else. Of course, during the summer they really didn't call for that terrible wind-driven thunderstorm, either, the one that destroyed half the trees in town, blew in garage doors and tore off roofs, until about an hour before it happened. I'm rapidly getting to the point where I don't trust what the weather people say until I see it happening with my own eyes. I just end up getting pissed off. If it looks like it's going to do anything, I'll put my car in the garage. Until then? Fuck it.
There's a lot of little upkeep-like things I have to do this weekend, a fair amount of them being student-related work and issues. Because I had to cancel class yesterday due to my eye, I now have to send a more detailed email to my students about what we'll be doing next week and how the week itself will play out. I have to stay there on West campus all day on Thursday anyhow, as it's the first night of my 210 night class, so I'll probably tell them that since I canceled class yesterday, if they want to or can stay after our class ends on Thursday to conference with me and have me look over all of their papers individually, it's the least I can do. I hate canceling class. Hate it.
If the storms aren't too bad and/or there's not too much rain today and tonight, I need to mow the grass this weekend. Regardless of what weather hits, the highs tomorrow and Sunday are only supposed to reach about 65. I'm not mowing when it's nearly 90 outside, because I've sweated enough over the course of the past few months, and again, eye issues. I'm letting the eye heal as much as possible and I'm going to mow when I can. I have to, or should at least, mow the grass one last time before real fall/winter weather sets in, as my yard isn't a complete jungle, but it's been a month or so, roughly, since I mowed it. It's been cool enough and dry enough to where it's not that bad, but still needs to be done.
I can tell the weather is coming in -- my sinuses, especially the ones in the back of my head above my neck, are really aching badly, and my face/nose is clogged up. This is also probably because I'm a bit dehydrated and haven't been drinking as much fluids (even coffee) as I normally do, since Daisy was here. That tends to happen more than I realize, actually -- I don't eat a lot except when we cook, and I don't really drink anything except what we drink when we eat when Daisy is here. It's like I go through some sort of metabolism change.
As for my sleeping habits -- aside from Tuesday night -- they've been...somewhat passable and/or normal, I suppose. I've been getting rest. It's not always useful, helpful rest (especially when it's been hot here the past two or three days) but it's rest. I'm used to sleeping with Daisy now, to the point where I'm not uncomfortable and don't have the desire to push her off the side of the bed in the middle of the night because I have an unconscious desire to spread out more (this was a problem during the first few times she stayed here). I think I really needed Daisy here this week a lot more than I realized; I may have gone nuts if I didn't have her here to talk to, to interact with, to have in my physical presence. I can't really talk to the cats about the sorrow surrounding the death of my sister, because all they do is look at me and meow. Obviously. And it's not like they know what a pineapple or an eyeball is.
So yes, this is my life right now, and that's all I can do with it. Tonight I'm going to watch for, and make sure, Daisy gets home okay. This afternoon I'm going to make something to eat and try to watch a movie (hopefully my eye lets me enjoy it) to relax, and avoid the storms that are now beginning to fire up around the area. This weekend I will have to do some minimal student work while I watch football. Other than that?
Time heals all wounds, I suppose.
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