My hairdryer broke today. As far as I know, you can’t fix a broken hairdryer. I think it’s one of those things you generally just ditch and go buy again. I actually went so far as to toss it into the garbage, but Tenzin suggested I ask our hair dresser about it — maybe she knows some grand tricks of the trade that will miraculously resurrect it. So we dug it out.
It would be a lot easier to just go buy a new hairdryer. But maybe we need something we can possibly save right now. Last night, Elfie asked me, “If Nan just rested a lot and took her medicine, couldn’t she be okay?” She was sobbing in the back seat of our car while I was driving home from my mom’s house for the 9th time in as many days — it finally sunk in, after a week of processing, that her Nan was going to leave her. It was excruciating. I wondered if I should pull the car over. When we got home, I carried her in and gave her to her dad, and then I just cried in the garage. And by the time I walked into the house, she was perfectly fine.
That’s kind of how it is around here — crazy crying one minute and total normalcy the next. I feel like I’m at a bizarre family reunion and we’re throwing summer barbecues every night, complete with games for the kids and cold beer for the adults. People eat cake, tell funny stories, and my mother lies in the next room, wasting away to where she looks like a prisoner from Auschwitz. She talks to us and likes hearing the sounds of kids running around. Meanwhile she’s medicated, miserable, and usually longing for sleep. It’s one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had: not wanting my mother to die, and yet wanting it all to end. There would’ve been something so hollywood-esque to the situation if she’d peacefully passed away a few days ago, the way we thought she would. Everyone “important” had made it to her bedside and said their goodbyes. But life is proving itself to be its usual messy self: never on-time or well-packaged. Our hope for a M.A.S.H. finale is turning into a Seinfeld nightmare. Damn writers.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.