This movie sucks. Why can't I leave the theatre?

It seems to be that there are two kinds of people who know about my mother’s death: those who want to know how I’m doing, and those who are just getting on with things like nothing happened.  I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I often find myself falling into the latter category.

To help set the scene a little, let me recap the timeline of the past year where my mother and I are concerned:

April 7-11, 2014 - my son and I go to Boston and New Jersey on Spring Break. I am well aware that my mother is getting older and her memory is a lot worse.  Other than that though, she seems mostly fine.

June 4-11, 2014 - after learning from my sister that my mother has cancer, I fly home for a week to help with hospital and house stuff, and to get the full info on our course of action, and (while I am in New Jersey) go with my sister to plan the prepaid funeral arrangements for whenever the inevitable comes.

September 24 - October 1, 2014 - I go home, at my sister’s request, to just be there, help out, and say goodbye. My Mom doesn’t really understand who I am, can’t really talk, and is close to the end.  I actually believe she may pass while I am in New Jersey.  She doesn’t.

October 5, 2014 - Mom dies.

October 7-11, 2014 - I fly home again, we have the wake at the funeral home and the memorial service at Mom’s church. I get back home and return to work.

And here I am, just a few weeks later, VERY well aware that I have not grieved.  I have not mourned.  I have not faced in complete reality the truth of my mother’s passing.  When it finally came, after just four short months of agonizing waiting (and sometimes wondering from afar how bad it was getting), I was not sad.  I had just seen my mother, held her hand and leaned in close to her ear to tell her it was okay to let go and join Dad in Heaven, and I knew I didn’t want THAT to continue any longer.  I knew I was powerless to change the effects of this illness or the fact that it had hit my family so suddenly and ruthlessly.  I never raged against my lack of control.  I just took it in stride.

But I know that I AM sad.  And that it does hurt.  But who has time to just put everything aside and cry?  Work is still there.  My son still needs tons of oversight in all things academic.  Commitments still must be met.  People are still counting on me for lots of things. I feel as though I am watching a movie I don't want to watch anymore, but I cannot get up and leave the theatre.

Is it that I have crafted a persona of having everything in hand and not sweating the bumps in the road, and I have to maintain that?  I don’t care about image in that way.  I don’t care much what people think.  But I make it a policy to never let people down.  I’m not even concerned about people seeing me show emotion.

I just don’t have the time.  I’m too busy to lose it and go through half a box of tissues and look a mess and be late for whatever’s next.  Especially not over something I can’t change.

I couldn’t change it when we got the diagnosis.  So I compartmentalized it into a thing my family and I were going through.  I couldn’t change it when Mom was never going to set foot in her own house again.  When she took a turn for the worse.  When it spread to her brain.  When she lost the use of her right side.  When she needed oxygen.  When we decided to start the morphine.  When I held her hand and thought “good bye” so I wouldn’t have to say it out loud.  I couldn’t change it when I got on a plane to come home, knowing I’d be making a return trip very soon.

Every step of the way, I couldn’t change it.  I couldn’t fix it.  I couldn’t make it better.  So what would be the point of losing my composure?  It would scare my son and make people want to comfort me.  It would let cancer get the better of me when I don’t even have the disease.  It could indicate a lack of faith in what happens after we die.

I appreciate when people ask me how I’m doing, or when they express their sorrow for my loss.  But I don’t want them to.  Is that normal?  Is that a thing?  It was so thoughtful of people to send flowers or a card or leave a message for me in email or on Facebook.  But I don’t want to be that person who had that thing happen.

Should we call this denial? Or postponing the inevitable?  Or am I heartless?

When I can’t remember entire conversations, or even people that I have met, and I don’t know what day it is or what I was supposed to be working on, does that go with the territory?  Do I claim the “my Mom died” excuse, and if so, for how long is that acceptable?

Should I be concerned when I can’t stay awake so I go to bed and then can’t fall asleep?  Do we chalk it up to having lost a loved one?  Is it fair to do that when I act like nothing has happened?

When does it stop?  When does my life go back to whatever I used to consider normal?  Do I need to set an appointment with myself to have a nervous breakdown?  I’d really rather not.