Dangling on a Thread

Whoever came up with the line .... 'it never rains, but it pours!' Man is that my life recently!

I've already mentioned the fact that my mom is diagnosed clinically depressed.... if truth be told... has been all her life, but chronically so for the last 7/8 yrs. She is spiralling downward once again into a deep black hole, and I am finding it so hard to reach in and try grab her hand to pull her out.

However, she is only the rain.

The last 10 days has seen the arrival of another crisis on my doormat, a culmination of 13 months of shear dysfunction between my three brothers. Each one has come to me with a major personal crisis / life upheaval experience which has made me realise I know absolutely nothing about them other than surface detail. Once upon a time, I saw my brothers as a tight brotherly unit... a rock ... with me on the outside being the only sister and the eldest. Years of silence, secrets, non-communication.... rooted in my mother, has insidiously pervaded through my family bringing fissures in that rock... which have expanded into gaping cracks. And in 13 months, a nerve has been exposed!

The matters they have revealed to me have left my heart shattered.... and suffice to say I cannot at this point divulge anything more. They are three broken men. Terrifyingly, I now find myself in the position where it is only me who can now try to pick up the shards and help fix things for them, as they do not, nor cannot, summon the strength to do so for themselves. But I really have no notion of where to start!

Last week... en route to the supermarket, I found myself driving on the verge of complete breakdown... this volcano of grief was just boiling away and surging to explode out of me. I really fought hard to contain it. My head and heart was screaming... 'what do I do? what do I do?'

On another night, I found myself in bed unable to sleep... my chest was heaving with this ugly pain trying to free itself. I found myself holding my chest tightly trying to smother the pain so as not to wake my husband.

Realising that this is unhealthy and that I really, really need to keep it together, I successfully made that tentative phone call to my mother's therapist.... I figure it may as well start there. I have a week and a half before I travel West to 'talk' to him. I feel blind. Please god.... he will give me some direction and tell me how I can fix my family...

And yet, despite all this.... I have gone and thrown myself into all sorts of projects.... Parent's Association committee, School Christmas Art Project, local ICA volunteer work, knitting circle........ is this an unconscious reaction to distract myself from my grief or am I running to stand still?

I would just love the peace of a soft Irish mist on my face. If only.