Devastated...

Most days I absolutely love having my blog because I can chat, offer small glimpses into my day...flirt, tease...titillate...


And then there are days that I absolutely hate having a blog because I feel like anything I write will be perceived as so boring that I will lose any readers I may have accumulated...


Today is neither of those two types of days. Today I am glad I have a blog and that mostly total just people who give a shit about Roxy Harte are here to read it. Because I really need to believe that someone cares... this is were it is going to get personal so if you are here for anything less than Roxy Harte pouring her heart and soul out...you night want to go elsewhere.


Twenty odd years ago, when my first husband was in the life-destroying car accident I started journaling in a hard bound journal. I didn't have Internet then...

I also didn't have an emotionally supportive family.


Try being twenty-one year old, two babies under the age of three, with a full time job and a mentally incapacitated quadriplegic husband...with no one to talk to...
I wrote a lot...

I recently dusted them off and read them (6 tomes) and really, it doesn't get much more depressing than that...


But that exercise in written purging is probably why when I get distressed now, I go to the keyboard. Sacred Secrets is the result of my mother's long illness and the subsequent care I gave her. Unholy Promises came about as a direct result of my father's coming to live with me after his dementia diagnosis.


This weekend, I got some pretty horrible news...and I am mentally having a hard time processing it all. I don't want to process it...I don't want to think about it...I just want to go back to Friday and not get the news...wouldn't that make my life easier? I hate feeling that way because it sounds so selfish but the only other alternative is to deal with a whole lot of anguish...some new, some ancient history. Some of it I didn't even know hurt so bad until I opened the box of memories and all the shit fell out on my head...

Saturday my phone rang and the Caller ID showed my brother's home phone number and the thought that went through my head is, "This isn't going to be good, you better sit down," because my brother has never called me. We've been fairly estranged for the better part of three decades. I can actually count on one hand the number of times we've spoken in that time.

My gut reaction was right...
My sister in law was on the other line and I kept waiting for her to say that my brother was dead...why else would she call? He wasn't dead, but he does have stage 4 cancer and he might not survive the treatment (the Doctor actually gave him a 20% chance of surviving the chemo and radiation and if he does, then they will try to do the surgery to remove the cancer.) It won't be pretty...it will be disfiguring and life altering...but will hopefully buy him some more time at life.

How should someone react to such news? I don't know...I know how I reacted. With rage. I saw red, the room swam with it, and I didn't know what to do with it all so I redirected it...at the doctors...but after I hung up, after I went running to blow off all that steam, I faced the last three decades...all of the years of separation...the years of trying to hold onto a relationship until it seemed pointless to keep trying...and I kept asking "Why?"

My brain took me backwards...5 years ago I saw him for 10minutes...and it was the best ten minutes we'd had together in 30 years. He came to my house...god knows why...but he came by...and I hadn't seen him since.

My brain took me back again...10 years...to the funerals of my parents. We didn't speak...I think we hugged but we didn't speak.

It seems so harsh when I go backwards...to the times I saw him...but we didn't communicate...a Christmas family dinner...after the birth of his oldest son...a graduation party. I kept trying to remember why we haven't been close...and then the shit fell out of the box and onto my head.

And I'm left sitting with it...trying to decide if any of it matters.

Saturday night, I went to see him and he is a bare wisp of the man he once was. We didn't have a moment alone...I wish we would have...there is so much unsaid between us...but I realized sitting there, a room between us...the look in his eyes was filled with love and that is a connection unaffected by time or circumstances or reasons long forgotten.

How can anyone fit 30 lost years into 3 hours?

I don't know that I will ever see him again.
I love him.