December 3, 2012 – I had a tough time deciding if I was going to go to work or not today. In the end I decided it was better to go in and deal with the empathy of my colleagues and the resulting emotions I knew would bubble to up easily.
It was better than sitting at home alone and staring at boxes of photographs.
My colleagues are so wonderful. And yes, of course they stopped by my desk, wrapped me in hugs, and said all those things that we all say when someone suffers a major loss. It doesn’t make it better, but it makes them feel a bit better because they don’t know what else to do. None of us knows what to do.
My Manager came in a hugged me. He made sure I understood that I didn’t have to be there, that i could have as much time as I needed. I was pretty sure that work was the best place for me to be, it would provide a distraction and hopefully I could be a bit useful. Besides, I felt badly for him. His team has disintegrated a bit. Of our team, our vet has been on leave since April and is back tomorrow, one biologist is out on medical leave, another spends most of his time on the Island and isn’t in the office very often. The third is on vacation. And then I vacated for the better part of a month over Mom.
By about noon I was out of tears. But near the end of the day when I had a one on one meeting with my manager and he gave me a huge bouquet of flowers and a card signed by everyone in the office, I found a few more.
It’s funny. You feel terrible that you can’t stop crying, and then when you suddenly do stop, you feel like you must have something wrong with you because you aren’t crying. I went into the lunchroom to cut the stems and put the flowers into a vase for my desk and a fellow from Habitat smiled and said “Birthday flowers?” I said “No, sympathy flowers…my Mother passed away.” He just stared at me for a moment and then almost whispered “I’m so sorry.” I almost laughed out loud when I said “Not what you expected was it?”
For some reason it reminded me of an old comedy skit Jim Carey did. It was about how some people answer questions wrong. Simple questions. Like – “How’s it going?” We all have an expected response “Great” but sometimes we get a different one. Or as Jim Carey said “Wrong answer!!!” That’s how I felt when I told that poor guy what the flowers were for. Not what he expected, and for some reason I wanted to giggle. Was that terrible? Was it irreverent? Was it disrespectful to Mom?
But again, I am my Mother’s daughter and I can find humour under just about any circumstance. It keeps me sane. She would have found the situation amusing too.
So here I am again at the end of the day wondering what to take a photo of. I was sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and Milo lay down on me, immobilizing me. But my camera was within reach, so this is all I could get a shot of at the time.
Cats can look so peaceful when they sleep. And there is something therapeutic about wrapping yourself up in a blanket and then having a cat lay on top of you. The weight. The warmth. It’s comforting.
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