Miss Rachel

We’ll miss you.

I’ve been in funk lately, and the only thing I can connect it to is that Woody is dying.  The past week her decline has been especially noticeable.  She has trouble standing and walking.  She’s not eating.

I have a weird sort of disconnect between my feelings and my mood.  For instance, you’d think “Her cat is sick and dying; of course she’s going to feel sad.”  The thing is, I don’t actually feel sadness directly, just a general discontent.  When my dad was sick with Alzheimer’s, slowly slipping away, it was almost agonizing to face so I kept going just feeling generally kind of “bummed” about it.  There was only one time, in therapy, where I let the sadness in and I began crying, great racking sobs, but only for about a minute before I pulled back.  My therapist said she could understand why I pulled back because those feelings are hard to feel.

Although feeling a general discontent is not good, I can function when I feel this way.  Of course, I like to deal with things head on, and I do think it’s healthier to actually experience your feelings, but on the other hand, I do have to function. I have stuff to do, places to go. I need to keep going.  Even though my cat is dying.

I’ve been holding off from posting because I don’t know how to combine my usual food and fitness-focused subject matter with the sad news of Sweetie’s uncle’s death which occurred a little over a week ago. So I’m just doing a post about that, and we’ll get back to “regularly scheduled programming” next time.

This death was very sudden and unexpected so it was especially hard for everyone.  He had a great family: a wife, six children and seventeen grandchildren.  He was also very well known and respected in the community- a former judge who belonged to a number of clubs and served on a bunch of committees.  Hundreds of people came to the wake and the funeral.  Sweetie was a pallbearer.

One good thing about events like this is that they put things in perspective and remind us of what’s really important in this life: our families and other loved ones.