Global apologies for disappearing like I did for as long as I did. I thought I’d be back in less than a month, two at most, but it’s been … several very hard months.
Like I posted on my last journal, my mother got sick late in September and there were a couple of complications. Most of my time was being with her and worrying about her; I lost basically all my motivation for everything I loved as time passed. I don’t have any interest in my characters at the moment. Hopefully that’ll return. Drawing’s been… something else. I have a few things to scan that I did in bed when I couldn’t sleep some nights, but it’s not much. I want to get used to it again, now that she’s passed and I have more time again. I’ll probably do ArtFight this coming month since it’s right around the corner, get my habits rolling, and use those entries to do some fresh commission examples, etc etc.
I have half a billion messages to reply to. I’ll get to them in order of importance, but I’ll probably be a bit slow. Apologies for that too. And as I don’t have any motivation for my characters, I’ll probably mass private them as well.
A bit more detail for the initiated:
We expected her to get better, but as time passed, it was just “one more month and it’ll be better” but it was always one month away, or more, no matter how much time passed. We thought she’d be home for Halloween, then Thanksgiving (we had dinner at the hospital, fun times), then we hoped Christmas, then my birthday. All she had to do was walk and eat a bit better. By the time the year rolled over we were just hoping she could stand on her own, and gave up on her being able to walk again, as she had gone from just doing physical rehab to needing full nurse care. By this point she was almost in constant pain. She got real sick again in March, and spent two days in CCU and didn’t wake up at all. those two days We spent 8+ hours there every day she was there, hoping for improvements. The day before she was admitted, the physical therapist had given up on her completely.
When she woke up she wasn’t the same person, and it was suddenly downhill from there. She struggled to eat anything as nothing but yogurt and Ensure would stay down, had hallucinations, her energy level was like a rollercoaster and we’d never be able to predict it. She had lost over 50lbs in half a year and it kept going down. By mid-May they said to put her in hospice and/or give her a feeding tube. We went with the latter since we couldn’t afford the former (We applied for medicaid but it didn’t go through in time, but if it did she would’ve gotten hospice then), and we had hopes that’ll turn around. Less than a week before her surgery appointment she ended up passing away. The week leading up to that day she was looking way better, too. She was energetic and almost herself for a while, and it was amazing. She wanted to get up and walk, wanted to eat, wanted to talk to us. We were so excited. She then had a sleepy Saturday and passed away that evening.
It was really sudden, and though hindsight is 20:20 where we can kinda see where her health started declining before all this… we don’t have any guilt. We did everything we could that was within our power, stayed by her side every day, and then she was gone sooner than we expected. We thought we had more time. We have a wedding to attend this fall, we thought she would still be around for it. Dad expected another anniversary to come and go. Her candle burned bright and then… poof. At least she’s not in pain, but it still hurts for us. I’m going to miss her.
It’s been really hard. It’s been constant, rolling stress at home for months. It’s tapering off as things come to a close, her funeral came and went, I saw family I didn’t even know existed (one of which wanted to fight for the funeral plots). We’re learning to cope, but I know some days will be really tough; I’ll have to realize that she’s not going to be here for our holidays and birthdays. The holidays sucked with her sick, but with her being completely gone, when she was always the center of the festivities…
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tl;dr: been away, busy helping take care of sick mom, she passed away, I'm trying to function as a person again.
I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. I went through a very similar situation with my own mother years ago, and I understand what pain you must be going through. I'm glad you are back and I hope that at least is a step towards slowly finding yourself again. It's going to be difficult and it will take a long time, but you aren't alone. Your family will be going through this together... and know that some of us at least will be thinking of you and hoping for the best. Just take care of yourself as best as you can. <3
5 years, 10 months ago
Thank you. I'm trying to do my best. Just one step at a time.
5 years, 10 months ago
5 years, 10 months ago
Thank you.
Artfight's been a huge pick-me-up in the past, so I'm crossing my fingers it'll be fun again.
5 years, 10 months ago
5 years, 10 months ago
Thank you.
5 years, 10 months ago