Is this truly my life?

Have you ever heard about Smith Magazine's "Six-Word Memoir" projects? You describe your life in six words. They have published several books from what their readers share.

Traditionally, when one loses one's parents, one is usually in one's fifties or sixties, or older if one is lucky, and the parent(s) in their seventies or eighties or more. It is hard to lose a parent, of course, but there usually exists a spouse and children, probably siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, to comfort one.

To steal someone else's memoir, my life has been "Not quite what I had expected." Or, more accurately: "It's all gone so horribly wrong." 

Because I have none of those people to comfort me. I have this aunt, who has not been a part of my life for 90% of it, as well as her children who I had not seen since the younger ones (now in the thirties) were ten. I have a half-brother who has been even less than 5% of my life and who drops into it now and then when it suits him. He always says he will call in a couple of days, even when I told him about Mom's death. That was more than a week ago. It's okay — I expected that.

Other aunts and uncles let go of me — and I of them — a couple of decades or more ago.

And my younger brother, the treasure of my life, died very young.

This is not how my life should be. Nothing has gone the way it should. Even allowing for my father's dying of a heart attack when I was seventeen, I should have my younger brother as my sibling and friend. I should have married and had children — if anyone was "made" for such things, I was. Family has always meant so much to me, and has been so elusive.

Fear of Sleeping and a Taste of Pain

I had intended to write regularly this summer. After all, my tasks were light. All I had to do was take my mom to treatments and help her out. But cancer consumed my summer, and then it consumed my mom.

I don't want to go to sleep at night. I don't want to get up in the morning. Tonight I fell into a rampage of sobbing, with my best friend patting me and holding my hand. Then he got me kleenex for my nose and a cool washcloth for my face.

I don't usually cry when someone dies, not much. I'm usually the strong one. When my dad died, I felt I had to be strong for my mom --- who was destroyed --- and my brother --- who was young. When my brother died at 18, I had to be strong for a host of people who were leaking tears and acting distraught; no one asked me if I needed any comfort.

There is no one to be strong for now but me. No one who depends on me for comfort.

No one who will be my anchor when I wander in the void. I feel as if gravity has given way and I don't know how to find my way home, or if I have a home to find a way to.

Meep

As some of you know, my grandma died last September after a long period of becoming progressively weaker. She ate less and less and drank less and less. After she died, although Mom and I missed her a great deal (she lived with my mom for several years), Mom wanted very much to travel, and to travel with me when possible. She wanted to go to Europe and to Hawaii with me.

Mom finished radiation on August 13th, just over 3 weeks ago. She has gotten progressively tired and weaker since a couple of weeks into radiation. We've been told that the effects continue after the treatments. She is now so weak that she can barely stand without help. i have to haul her up to get her from a sitting position; so far I haven't hurt myself or dislocated her arm (we aren't doing this correctly but haven't made any other route work yet). I am going to contact Home Health: I cannot do this by myself anymore.