Emotional Layer Cake of Rough

Have you ever had one of those days where every time you turned around you felt like somehow you were being hit with something else that just knocked you emotionally?

I knew that when I got up this morning that I would need to get out of the house extra early in order to conduct some interviews for my job. I'm not feeling well - I have still have this cold - and I did not sleep much last night. I rummaged through the closet trying to find something to wear that didn't look disastrous, finally managed to get my Medusa hair to lay a bit more straight, pulled my things together and only upon leaving the house realized that I still needed to get gas. I walked into the office with 3 minutes to spare. I felt ugly, fat, and ill-prepared to do what I needed to do. These days, many days, trying to feel put together and confident at my job is simply not happening.

My baby, Sydney, is ill for the first time in her short life. It is just a cold - we verified that with the doctor today, but even the sound of her raspy little breaths when I woke this morning just tore at me. I work full-time - I don't have the option of staying home with her (otherwise I would jump at the chance) - and the thought of her dealing with these strange things going on in her body, the tiny coughs, the heaving of her little chest trying to push the air through - I just hated it. She is a smiley, happy baby by all accounts, and she is handling her first illness far better than I am. The guilt - first, that I probably gave her the cold, second, that I can't be there for her to cuddle her through this - has been eating at me all day.

On top of all of these things...in speaking to my mom today, I learned that my 93 year old grandmother is starting to decline rapidly. She is a little tiny bird of a woman, not too cognizant of what is going on around her - she has lived far past that point in which the future, or even the present, matters and is lost somewhere in the reaches of her mind and in the past. She is dying. It is not this part that made me sad - I believe in my heart that it would be a blessing for her to go and be with the friends and loved ones who have gone before her. It is a combination of the guilt of not having seen her as well as my mother telling me that my grandmother had stopped singing. You see - as long as I can remember, my grandmother has always hummed a little tune. She may not know who we are, she may not know where her teeth are, and she may have flushed her hearing aid down the drain...but this tiny piece of her has remained a constant. She's not eating by herself anymore, the moments of clarity seem to have disappeared...but the thing that makes me the most sad is imagining the little bird without her song.

So - it's been a long day. I'm home from work now, home with my husband, and peering at my snuffly little smiley baby (now sleeping). I am glad to be here. That said, I am glad that this day will soon be behind me. There is only so much a heart can tolerate in a 24 hour period, and mine needs quiet and rest.