Judgment Day

– Posted in: Cancer Sucks, Grief, Mom dying, Momless, Mouths of Babes, Newt, Parenting, Personal Insanity, The Kids are Killing Me

For the past week or so, Newt’s been acting, how should I put this. . . like an asshole. He blows up for no apparent reason, has lousy manners, and talks to me in “teenager” tone. But here’s the rub — when I call him on his behavior (which I almost always do without fail), he dissolves into a state of self-flagellation and self-pity, crying and calling himself a “mean” or “bad” boy. This has placed me in the unenviable position of trying to figure out if I should: 1) tell him he is indeed not a bad boy and just needs to make some attitude adjustments (which I’ve done), 2) tell him to knock it off and then ignore him (which I’ve done), or 3) hold him while he cries it out (which I’ve also done).

Now, I like to fancy myself to be one of those mothers who don’t make excuses for her kid’s behavior. But this is not to say that I don’t come up with reasons for my kid’s behavior. The difference being that “excuses” lead to excuses for why your kid can act like an asshole and then justify why you do nothing about it, while “reasons” are explanations for the behavior, but they in no way deter you from cracking down on the little assholes. Anyway, because I’m a chronic over-thinker, it crossed my mind that Newt might be having some pent up emotions about Nan dying. He’d just made a sympathy card for his teacher whose mother had passed away suddenly, and he’d drawn a picture of the van that took my mom’s body away. Not to mention, I seem to have hit some sort of psychic speed bump that’s caught me off guard — I really thought we’d all be feeling “better” by now. After all, it’s been 7 months, and we made it through the holidays. It all seemed very logical. Until last night.

Newt flipped out and yelled at Tenzin about being hungry, so Tenzin told him to stay up in his room until he could be respectful and polite. During his incarceration, he was apparently looking at photos of my mom, so when he did finally come back down, he was still quite upset. Now, Newt isn’t exactly the greatest communicator — he has a tough time getting certain concepts across. But as he sat at the dinner table, spoon in hand, he suddenly had no trouble at all letting us know what was bothering him when he blurted this out:

“I just don’t want anything to change, I want it all to stay the way it is right now, because I just love you all so much, and I don’t want you to die.”

So I’m thinking, Newt may have some reasons for acting like such an asshole.

And speaking of assholes, I was looking through the newspaper yesterday and came across one of those memorial ads. It was for a 97-year-old woman, and it said something to the affect of “Although it’s been a year, Mom, we still miss you.” Now, you’d think that I, of all people, would empathize. But no. My first thought was, “Son-of-a-bitch. Your mother lived until she was almost 100, and you consider this tragic enough to put a reminder in the paper a year later? Seriously? Memory ads are for kids who die of cancer or people who are killed in car accidents. Not people who almost make it to the Today Show segment with Willard Scott.” So, clearly, I’m bitter. And irrational. But, then, grief isn’t rational. Just like grief doesn’t have an expiration date. Because one of my best friends recently lost her 91-year-old grandfather, and while his absence has left a huge hole in their family, I know that on some level, she thinks shouldn’t feel as bad as she does because he lived such a good, long life.

Apparently we can’t even feel secure and unjudged in our grief. Thanks, in part, to mean, bad, judgmental people like me. I was raised Catholic, so maybe this is just all that hardcore nun action coming out all at once — the guilt, the criticism, the self-flagellation.

Incidentally, I have no idea where my kid gets his crazy ideas from.

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