Grief and Grieving

I realized yesterday that one month from today my mother will have been dead for a year. For the most part I've been ok for the past year - there have been a few episodes of total and complete breakdown, complete with me wailing "I miss my mommy". Thankfully I have a very supporting and understanding husband. He hasn't been through this, but he's really good at just holding me and letting me wail and trying to comfort me.

On other fronts involving my mothers death it has not been so easy. My father used to call me 3-4 times a day, just to chat. Bear in mind that my father and I are not...close. There is love, yes, but we are so alike personality-wise that we always butt heads...even when on the same side. My mother tried her hardest to get us to bond before she died and she more-or-less succeeded...but not enough for me to be able to tolerate being called all the time and having to deal with his grief on top of my own. Not that he's EVER directly talked about it - it's more the fact that he called me so much, to talk about things like his finances, how hard it was to have to take care of himself, etc. Of course, my internal response was "welcome to being an adult, dad" and my external response was just noise about it sucking. My siblings don't call, thankfully - we've never really been close and mom being gone didn't change that. I talk to my sister every 6-8 months or so, and go YEARS between speaking to my brother. My uncle (mom's last remaining brother) and I have never really been close, although he seems to think we are. I think he's a religious con man, although I've never said as much. I'm too damn polite for my own good.

At any rate, I can feel the grief creeping up on me. I have felt this way before, a sense of unspecific dread, around things like my first wedding anniversary, my ex's birthday, things like that. Usually only for the first few years, and it always took me a few days to figure out why I was acting like I was...and once I figured it out, it was ok. This time I know a full month ahead of time that it's coming up. I have a feeling this is going to mean a month of bad dreams - I really should say horrendous nightmares. They're full of death, chaos, murder, blood, violence. I get them every time I go to the cemetery to put flowers down for mom, which is why I don't do if often. Last night I had dreams of suicide. I also have a feeling that my father is going to start calling me all the time again - he's already calling me every day again, twice on Saturday...not for anything important, but to talk about the weather. I...I can't handle their grief. I can't handle his on top of mine, or my sister calling, or my uncle messaging me. I have always been the one EVERYONE turns to, and I want to wall myself off. Please...don't talk to me. Don't pile your grief on top of my own. Mine is crushing me as it is - I feel like my insides are one big rock. But I can't TELL them that - I'm their rock. I'm the first one dad will turn to, instead of friends. I'm the one my uncle is going to write, telling me how much he misses my mother, his sister, and how he's praying for all of us in our time of grief.

Prayer. What a joke. Do I believe in God? Yes. Do I believe most of the things I was taught when I was younger? Yes. Not blindly, but because I've thought about them. What I have a hard time reconciling is that my mother was a devout Christian - she prayed, others prayed for her, all asking God's will to be done. God's will was apparently to take my mother away from me. I am so angry I could spit nails. God's blessings on my mother? She suffered with cancer for 14 months the last time before she died. That's a blessing? I have such a hard time with religious types right now, but I'm too polite to tell them to fuck off and stop wishing "God's will" and "God's blessings" for people who are ill. It kills them. This goes for people on Facebook - I have several friends who are either religious or who have recently discovered religion and all their posts contain it and I just want to scream. I don't want to block them - what's the point in being friends with someone you've blocked? I don't really have the right to tell them to stop either, because it's a public place.

How do I deal with this shit? I can't just tell my family that I don't want to talk to them - that's selfish. REALLY selfish. God is my uncles world - he's a minister. I can't tell him not to talk to me about God - he'll just tell me every day that he's praying for me, which will get really fucking annoying. Husband says the best way to deal with anger is to just let it go - but I don't know how. I can accept the fact that my mother is dead and that nothing I do will bring her back - that has never been my problem. My issue has always been "why" - I don't "heart" understand it and it's making it difficult for me to move past this. I am angry, I want to hide...and I can't.