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Meditations on Grief
The thing about it is that it colors everything. It seems impossible to live in — suffocating, grasping. And to step out of it, to try and live, feels like climbing over the bones of everything lost. It feels like betrayal — and all the worse because it’s necessary.
Right now my daughter is in the hospital. Last night I was talking to her, spending some time tucked in next to her. I was telling her about my stupid dating drama and she was encouraging me, then telling me how she was feeling. How she is overwhelmed and lonely and tired and sick and afraidandhurtingandallthefeelings. I listened, she listened. We said “I love you” and I went upstairs. Two minutes later she called me asking for a blanket. She was stuttering, and when I got downstairs she was shaking violently. We put the pulse/ox on and it was going haywire — heart rate 177, oxygen 90 then 77 then 89. She said her hands and feet felt cold. We called the paramedics. Right before they took her to the hospital, they took her temp: 97. By the time they got to the hospital, roughly 20 min later, it was at 103. One minute she was OK and the next, we were in chaos.
It turns out she has two infections in her blood. One is staph, the other is yet to be determined. She has to have her port removed — then we have to decide whether or not to put it back in. She will be in the hospital for a bit — and part of me is relieved because…