Not only have they STILL not regenerated my links page, which has caused havoc with my diary reading (passive plaything of habit that I am), but I can't even change my template because the servers are overloaded. Bastards.
So, anyway.
It was a lovely quiet morning in my quiet house, the first day of my vacation. I was sitting around looking through the 1870 and 1871 Harper's Weeklies and the 1875 Scribner's Monthly that I received from www.rarenewspapers.com. Charming way to spend the morning. Now I look about me, the sink needs washing, the floor needs sweeping and mopping, I have laundry to do, the house isn't fit to be seen. That's what happens when I spend a lovely quiet morning reading. Until I had a bit of bleeding, and then started feeling sick, and had to go lie down.
April 8 I went in the morning to Aunt H's funeral. My second cousins had assembled photographs of her from her teenage years onward, which were displayed on easels at either side of the casket. Truth to tell, I paid them more attention than I did the small, disease-ravaged body in the casket, as they seemed more real; though the photo of her, newly married, standing with her husband on the lawn in front of their new house, looking up at him with undisguised adoration, was flat, black and white, it still seemed more immediate than her corpse, all the color, the lilac dress, the curled gray hair, the nearness and three-dimensional substance of which could not overcome its utter stillness and strange impassivity — qualities that Auntie had never in all her life displayed for even a moment.
"What is that little locket...?" I asked my cousin J., her daughter, pointing to the tiny ornament pinned to Auntie's dress, a gold, heart-shaped locket holding tiny black-and-white photos of a man and a woman, whom I took at first to be my grandparents. Cousin J. explained, "My dad gave that to her when they were dating." It took a moment for my befogged mind to understand that her dad was my uncle. So Uncle J. had given Aunt H. this little courtship gift, long before they were anybody's parents or aunt and uncle. Cousin J. and I both brought out our tissues at that point.
But even as I dabbed away tears throughout the service, I knew I wasn't crying for Auntie, who had suffered from arthritis for decades, who had been housebound for the past couple of years, and whose spirits had at the very last failed her. She, I trust, was free from pain, disease and depression, and was at peace. I knew quite well that I was crying for much the same reason as I cried last autumn when I buried Henry. In his case, it was only fourteen years of my life that I was burying; in Auntie's case, it was all my childhood. It was my own mother, her sister; it was Sundays at Grandma's house, the loud and incomprehensible Polish conversations carried on in the background, the television, the omnipresent sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, the sweet irresponsibility; it was the free, lazy afternoons when we could walk over to White Castle, and take hamburgers to the park for a picnic; it was being loved as children are loved, for no other reason than that I existed and carried the genes of those who loved me. I have the capacity to do these things simultaneously: to hold my own life, and life in general, in some degree of contempt; and to mourn its loss, with the kind of grief that makes me want to hide away in my bedroom and cry all afternoon.
So I filed past the casket at the end, and silent thanked Auntie for having changed my diapers, as she must have done, when I was a baby, for having been so kind to me, always, in spite of my less-than-sparkling personality. I looked again at that little locket, and thought of how my mother had said that Uncle J. was a control freak who dominated every aspect of Aunt H.'s life, who had once criticized her severely for buying a tablecloth without his approval. I thought of the joy of love and the reality of marriage. I thought of closeness and distance. I thought of the chasm that seemed always to open up between Auntie and me, when she, a devout Catholic, spoke of the Pope, or of how important the Blessed Mother had always been to her. I thought of the absurdity of feeling nostalgia for a childhood that had been largely miserable — even as the tears streamed down my cheeks and I was wishing I had brought more tissues!
So Auntie is buried: God bless her (if there is a God). She was a kind and loving woman, who wholeheartedly supported what I considered to be a corrupt religious institution. She lived a long and honorable life, and was greatly beloved; and I would not have traded places with her for anything.
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(WARNING: GRAPHIC MEDICAL DETAILS HEREAFTER)
I had to leave the banquet early, to get to my appointment with Dr. S. Before leaving, I had again stopped in the ill-lit women's room to put in a fresh super-plus tampon. The drive to from Whiting to Portage took about an hour. At the hospital, I stopped in the women's room, and the state of things evoked from me an involuntary "Jesus Christ!" Not only had I completely soaked through the tampon, but the heavy-duty pad I was wearing as a back-up was almost completely saturated, also. And no toilet paper. I was hopping around with my pantyhose around my knees, getting paper towels from the dispenser by the sink. Do you think that's fun? And when finally I finished, some poor woman was waiting patiently (haha! because it's a hospital) outside for me to finish. Nothing is quick and efficient when you're bleeding to death. Sorry.
Dr. S looked at the menstrual chart I had so carefully filled out, paid very little attention to my notations of a very heavy evening when I spent three hours soaking through a super-plus tampon every 20 minutes, but nonetheless agreed at last (after suggesting we try an endometrial ablation again, to which I said No dice) that I can have my long-desired hysterectomy, only — he doesn't want to operate while I am so severely anemic.
I thought that was the point, you jerk.
He gave me a hormone shot that was supposed (but not quite accurately supposed) to stop all bleeding activity, to allow my blood supply to build itself back up. He forecasts that I can have my operation in late May, and oh blessed event! six weeks' leave from work!
Then, on the way out, stopped in the women's room, another tampon dripping blood, another tiresome fussing about, another woman waiting patiently (haha!) on the other side of the door when I got through.
And, oh yeah, I told my supervisor that when I go on medical leave, she can take the opportunity to change my assignment, to get me away from Boss #3, whose face I long to slap.
That's all for now, folks.
