No Good Very Bad Day

I'm not sure exactly why but right after the mommy passed I was very sensitive to sound. I couldn't watch much TV or listen to the radio. No music. Definitely no news. I've gotten back to a little NPR in the morning and Rachel at night. I try with music but I usually get too sad. I may have some kind of auditory/tactile synesthesia. I feel noises in my body.
So there's a media black out today. I am participating. However. It's not hard. I still need quiet. I really can't tolerate the news today. But I find myself having difficulty understanding how I feel.
This isn't the first time I've felt miserable about a new president. Reagan. Bush one. Bush two. It isn't the first time I felt like things were hinky. Russians, FBI, gerrymandering. Something feels off. She had more of the popular vote than anyone in history. Just hold that thought for a minute.
I think it's likely that he'll be impeached relatively soon because he has too many problems but then it's Pence and the Republican senate and congress. I mean. It's bad. It's going to be bad for awhile.
But how do I feel?

I'm sad because the mommy is gone but I'm angry and hurt because of how hard it was to take care of her. I got cards from a few of the organizations that "helped" and people were complimenting me because I was such a great advocate for my mom. OK. But why did I have to be? I've lost all faith in systems. I've lost a lot of faith in people. There were stand out people who helped us so much but there was a lot of wrongness.
So I feel like I'm already on the ground and the jack boot awareness of this new regime is just another thud. It hurts. I'm angry. But I already was. My mother was (essentially) kicked out of the last two homes she had. Both times she was dying. Just hold that thought for a minute.
I started a new book yesterday. There is an epigraph from Santayana.

Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.  

Hmmm.
Yeah.
Well.

Rachel keeps saying this is not a time to stop paying attention. She's right. There is work to do. There has always been work to do. I'm not going to march because I can't walk. I'm not going to wear a hat because why does everything with women have to be pink? Why are there always cats? I get the history of women crafting together and I get that things need to be fun but ... pink? Why?
I will find a way to be part of the resistance.
But this day.
This is just no good.
Very bad.

Where Was I?

I stopped reading right after the paintings by Alice Neel and right before the poem by Fanny Howe. I found that amusing but the real reason I was going to sleep was because my stomach hurt. I'd eaten badly and my stomach was letting me know. I felt like I might vomit and I wanted to try and sleep before it got worse. It worked. Sort of. I was awake an hour later, feeling a bit better but bad enough to try sleeping in the recliner for awhile.
When I first get in bed it's the princess and the pea. I have to have everything just so or I can't sleep. Once I'm asleep it's all good. I woke up at one point with the remote to raise and lower the bed and a book wedged into my rib. Hadn't noticed.

I wrote that about a month ago. I usually have an idea for posts that more or less arrive at something resembling a whole idea. I have no idea where I was going with this. It's a description of an average night. I'm reading something. In this case The Paris Review. I don't know why I found it so amusing to stick the book mark between a painter and a poet but I did. My stomach bothers me a lot. But sometimes it's my knee. Or any random joint. I almost always go back and forth between the bed and the recliner. Why did I think this was an interesting start to a post?
I thought about deleting it.
My thinking is muddled. More muddled than usual.
I did delete a half a sentence that I think might have been about a dream. The sentence was about a little stuffed Kermit that Mandy gave the mommy. When the mommy was zonked on morphine she held that frog and seemed to be trying to understand what it was. I can clearly picture her hands wrapped gently around it, moving slightly.

I was looking to the normal rhythms of life to distract me. But life hasn't been normal. We've had piles of snow. There's ice on roads and sidewalks. I can't get to the pool or any appointments.
In some ways I like being house bound. Swimming will always be my preferred exercise but my yoga practice is getting deeper. I now have a house bound routine, which includes reading in the afternoon. It feels so luxurious to read in the afternoon. I did it school but I had assigned reading.
The other day I was reading and I hit a page I couldn't seem to take in. I started over and started over and was just about to bag it when I realized that the first sentence was: Everyone has a mother.
Oh.
Yeah.
Well.
Grief is odd. There are days when I feel like I'm trying to conjure it up. Like I feel I need to do more and I'm not ready to stop. Like letting go of grief is letting go of her again. Too soon. There's too much chatter. It's gritty. But when I feel sad, just sad, when the tears come I know it's real. And then I let it roll over me.
So maybe it was another story about the last days of the mommy and how it still hurts. Maybe that's where I was going. But it was also about me finding pleasure in an odd moment with reading. Because that's the way it is now. Small pleasures. Memories. Tears always in my eyes. The search for comfort.