the process of grief

Since my dad's diagnosis and subsequent hospital and rehab stays, on the off chance I have a few moments to step back and actually think straight, I often find my eyes welling up with tears.  Maybe I'm walking down the aisle at the grocery store and I think "All these people around me...they don't know this, but my dad is dying."  My amazing, sweet, funny, loving dad, is slowly dying a horrific death.  I find myself wanting to do absurd things, like lay down on the cool tile in the middle of the produce section and bawl like a baby.  I want to scream out that yes there are so many horrific diseases...but this one is doubly cruel.  Because all the while my father is dying from an incurable disease,  I am experiencing the loss of the most incredible man I know to a death all its own.  I'm plagued by the fact that my mother is single-handedly caring for the man she has loved for more than 50 years.  That she will certainly shorten her own life expectancy by taking on a task too great for any one person.  I try to be there as often as possible.  Because to me, helping my parents is never a question of IF, it's a matter of HOW.  And it has been a gift (a hard and difficult one to accept) to be able to share a small part of this journey.  And it has been an eye opener to see how sickness can literally destroy a family and its ties.  I lived under a very false assumption that when someone got sick, everyone showed up.  That *showing up* was a given.  I have learned the hard way that this is not the case.  That my expectations are only my own.  I've been mad as hell about that part.  Still have sudden waves of anger, but I've learned to bide my time, let it pass, ebb and flow.  I think how things could be (should be) so much easier if we all could give of ourselves a little more.  It would be life changing.  I say that over and over  again in my head.  Life changing..life changing.  And I realize maybe letting go and giving in is the only way to keep moving forward.  That the images of my strong, brilliant dad can still reside in the part of my brain that now also carries the traumatic moments these months have shown me.  I can't forget my dad with tears in his eyes, not understanding what was happening to him.. I can't push away the memories of seeing him on the gurney or unresponsive until 6 bags of fluid were pushed into him.  I can't un-see his face, white as a ghost, his hands freezing and eyes full of fear looking at me with trust in his eyes.  Or the way the paramedics looked at me as if to say I'm sorry because we know how horrible this is.  I can't forget the searching and searching for a vein, until finally the nurse (at my mother's urgent request to stop poking him) moved to a last resort of a rarely used spot near the ankle.  And I will never forget my mother rising to every single occasion when no one should have been given this much to bear.  And she carries it with grace, no complaint, never resting.  She is his constant, his world.  They are my world.  Nothing could be more important.  I carry tremendous guilt for putting my own daughter off.  But this is crisis mode.  She understands.  But it kills me.  How do you balance?  It isn't black and white.  The anxiety eats you up alive.  If I'm not physically there, I'm researching.  I'm googling.  I'm checking out every book on the topic, looking for something we've missed.  I'm praying on my knees, begging (no longer for answers, we are past that) but for solutions and ideas to help us where we are now.  And those moments I'm staring into the great abyss of the fruit and vegetable aisle?  I'm only thinking how my mom is no longer allowed this freedom.  She tells me this is their new normal, that people do what people can do, that I shouldn't worry so much.  And she tells me that she is fine.  Because my mom still protects me at 44.  In the midst of her own suffering and loss, she finds time to mother me.  That's what parents do.  And in spite of my selfish tendencies, I hope I can in some small, tiny way be an anchor for them during this storm.