SO WHAT NOW?

You’ll probably note that I’ve been silent for a while; my last blog entry is from November 2015. While I intended to keep up with my writing, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas proved to be intensely busy for me, both professionally and personally.

I wish I could say, checking back in sevenish months later, that I’d lost another twenty pounds, was off another of my diabetes meds, and I was starting to get hit on by twenty-somethings looking for some cougar action.

Alas.

Nor is this one of my humorous offerings about excessive cookie consumption.

I imagine that those who read my blog are just my friends and family, and they already know what’s up, but for those who might not know me, I want to write about the wheels falling off my proverbial cart.

Four days after Christmas I lost my sister Laurie. She died in her car on the side of the road, of what we think was a massive heart attack. And when my brother called to tell me, my whole world came crashing down. Everything fell apart. Every plan I made, every hope and dream I had, every ounce of will or desire to do or to be anything just stopped.

It’s almost six months to the day, and I still can’t get through any waking period without losing it at least once. And sitting down to write about my little weight loss struggles seems unbelievably trivial and pointless. In an irony I am still wrestling with, my sister’s death at 59 should be a powerful motivator for me to continue my work toward better health, with the hope that it will enhance both the length and quality of my life. We were cut from the same cloth. We were built the same, we walked the same, we had the same aches and pains, and we were only seven years apart. But all her death has done is crush my desire to do anything useful, or to move forward. I know this is temporary. I know, like all things, grief has its season.

So what now? I’m still 190 pounds. I don’t know how, because I’ve spent the last five months seesawing between eating everything in sight and eating nothing at all. I haven’t walked, or exercised, or given a flying fuck, frankly. I cancelled my March checkup, rescheduled it for June, and then cancelled that. My doctor sent me a letter saying I had to come in or she would stop prescribing my meds. I have an appointment for July. I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of ground, and my blood sugar numbers will be bad, and I’ll feel like a stupid shit sitting there and telling her I’ve fallen apart and can’t seem to find my way back. I can’t even say my sister’s name without crying, but I’ll have to try to explain why I was a rock star at my checkup last fall and now I’m an unmotivated lump.

The loss of a loved one is a common, shared, human experience, and I know each of you reading this understands the power that grief has to upend everything, to make you feel lost at sea. And that the re-undertaking of the mundane, the getting-back-to-living is excruciating, because it means that on some level you have to let go. I’ve found in these last months that I feel guilty about anything that brings me happiness or joy. I couldn’t listen to music, or sing, for weeks and weeks after she died. I walked my garden this spring (her hand is everywhere), and I couldn’t stand the fact that everything was so fucking beautiful, and that we wouldn’t ever have a chance to walk together, anywhere, ever again. And that we’d never sing together, or laugh together, or share treasured, happy memories, or add any more to the million threads of our tapestry, which is incomplete, but nonetheless done.

I’m not writing for sympathy or expressions of concern. I just know that I need to keep writing, and that my sister would want me to. She always had confidence in me. She always believed that someday I would be a "real," published writer. I can feel her at my back now, telling me to get busy.

I have no idea what comes next. But I will keep writing, and hope that something good comes of it, soon. Because I need something good to come of it. Soon.