Rubes

Joke of the week:

My grandma just died.

[pause for effect and sympathy]

And then they brought her back to life four minutes later!

I've been getting people with that one all week.

Ruby seems to be doing better.  She's terrorizing the nursing staff at the hospital (including a woman I happened to go to junior high and high school with) and generally raising hell.  When I talked to Ruby on the phone yesterday she told me not to worry.  "I died on Saturday," she said.  "I won't be doing THAT again."

Mostly she's angry she didn't get to see the white light.

I want to comfort her on that but am having difficulty summoning my sympathetic voice.

I joke, I kid, I dance around it.  But her almost-dying was much more traumatic, for me, than I anticipated.  She seems to have dealt with it fine, but I had the realization during that whole event that I am an early-griever.  I get bad news--PruPru has cancer, Ruby is dying--and I freak out.  Totally and utterly.  System failure.  I get an upset stomach, I shake, I can't focus, I cry uncontrollably.  I'm unable to do anything but collapse on the bed and pass out until the whole thing blows over.

Then, I'm pretty much fine.  I can handle oozing tumors and open casket funerals and whatever other gruesome things come my way.  They don't bother me much.  But that first day, whoa.  I'm a mess.

This does not bode well for those around me.  First, it means I'm terrible in a crisis.  I always thought I was kind of good in a crisis, but now I see that I'm not.  I'm worthless.  At first, anyway.

Second, it is not very comforting to those around me, all this gnashing of teeth and wailing.  I mean, PruPru is still alive.  Ruby is still alive.  And I basically write them off for dead in the first instance.  I mean, how's that for optimism?

I don't know what all this means.  I think it is somehow connected to that panic attack I had about that half-dead mouse the cats brought into the house that one time.  I'd link to that old post but I'm too lazy.  Anyway, it's the same feeling, that doom is approaching and some action is required of me and I'm trapped.

Panic.  Freakout.

This is probably connected to my control-freak-ness.  You see it all clearly, don't you?  You understand me better than I understand myself?  If you do, please email me offline so that I can develop some self-awareness around my early grieving and quit being such a pain in the ass.