So this is the anger phase.

It appears that I have reached a new phase in the grief continuum, the anger phase. Actually, it's more appropriately titled the "anger and resentment" phase.

Inexplicably, I find myself resenting people I know who are happy, doing well and feeling good about themselves.

Now, if this resentment was targeted toward strangers - you know, people on TV who'd won the lottery, the scientist who won the Nobel Prize - that would seem reasonable. It'd even be reasonable if it was directed at people I know who haven't suffered any kind of loss in their lives. I have loss and grief and general dismay, they don't. Makes sense. Textbook, really.

But no, I get the good fortune of directing this toward people who I know, people who I care about and who care about me. Friends who have had their own losses but who seem happy at the moment.

Life feels hard. Happiness is fleeting, untenable. I want no part of those people who feel good about themselves.

How's that for healthy?

The only solace is that I know that it was my father who shared with me the following Gore Vidal quote: "When a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies."

I always thought it was kind of funny in its subtle truth. Right now, though, it just feels ugly.

Grief post #10,463

Sometimes I find that I use my grief as a way to let me off the hook. When I'm beating myself up about not getting to the gym, having a bad attitude, being so tired or just feeling useless, I try to inject what I've come to refer to as "grief perspective."

It goes like this:

"Someday, Carolyn, you'll look back on this time and realize that the reason you were the way you were and did the things you did is that you were grieving."

Sometimes it helps and I stop the negative inner dialogue. Then, of course, I usually pour a glass of Bushmills. Sometimes it doesn't help though, and I figure that I'm just using it as an excuse.

That's when the self-talk gets really healthy.

Epiphany

This one might seem a little late in coming, but I had an epiphany this week. I realized that three children is enough.

You might think that I realized that before, say, back in 2001, when I had that little burning procedure done on my fallopian tubes.

No. Back then, what I - or, should I say, what WE - realized - was that three should be enough. We also realized that we could not be trusted to be responsible enough to stop at three. Given enough distance from newborn hell, we definitely would have given into the temptation to make just one more. And then maybe just one more.

So, we took matters into our own hands and put a stop to all that conception nonsense.

Since then, while I have felt that our family is complete, I have always felt that there is room for one more.

Always, until this week.

When I consider what it takes to coordinate the life of this family - of three children at different schools with different homework and different interests and different activities - I just can't imagine giving time and energy to one more person.

I'm all full up.

Upheaval

In the last two weeks, we yanked Wolfgang out of his inner-city magnet school and moved him to the white bread suburban middle school right here in town. (And, yes, btw, I'm fully aware of the implied meanings of the phrase "inner city.")

You know, you try to do the right thing for your kid, try to expose him to different ideas, experiences, people. We sent him to the school because of its science and technology focus, but I also hoped that being in a racially and economically diverse environment would be a good life experience. After all, life isn't all upper middle class white suburbia.

Well, when I went to the parents' open house at his old school a couple weeks ago, it became clear to me that eighth grade was not going to offer Wolfgang the academic experience we were looking for. I believe that if we left him in the inner city magnet school he wasn't going to be adequately prepared for high school here in white suburbia. So, we pulled him.

After the first day at our local middle school, I asked Wolfgang how it is different from his old school.

His response: "This school is way less ghetto." Or maybe it was, "There are way less ghetto kids here." Either way, you get the idea.

Yeah, I don't what the hell I'm doing when it comes to this parenting thing. About the only thing I can say with any certainty is that whatever I do, I do it deliberately. For whatever that's worth.