A Daughter's Notebook: Notes from an Unprepared Daughter

I stare ahead, focused, intent. I know my next moves. I know what needs to be done. This is something with which I am comfortable.

Table setups, directing the team, setting up registration, determining signage, making final decisions. A colleague asks for my opinion, and I give it without hesitation. I know how to respond.

On Sunday night I switched my mindset. I moved into work mode. I had a large event and multiple meetings ahead of me. I needed to focus, to operate. I needed to compartmentalize. So, I shut down the side of me that was processing the news about my dad’s ALS diagnosis. It was business. I was business.

I came home on Monday night after setting up for Tuesday’s event. My husband had had some beer. He was processing the emotions I was avoiding. I couldn’t get pulled in. I needed to stay compartmentalized. I needed to stay in work mode. I shut him down. There was a part of me that recognized this, that felt badly that I was unable to connect with him about it. He had been supporting my emotions over the past several days, but he hadn’t taken the opportunity to break down for himself. And here I was processing everything with the mind of a computer.

I went through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and most of Thursday that way. After a client meeting on Tuesday, my boss asked me how I was doing. She had switched into personal mode. I couldn’t do it. I felt myself shake my head, trying to process what was happening, trying to respond like a human instead of a robot.

“I just put on my business face to get through it all,” I replied.

She nodded.

It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon when I met with my therapist for the first time since receiving the news that I let myself open up again, that I moved away from my business-self.

I told her the news as if it had happened to somebody else. I could hear my voice from far away, like a reporter. She asked me how I was doing, how it made me feel.

I stopped.

How it made me feel.

At that moment, I felt nothing. I’d been working. I’d been focused. I had been doing my job and doing it well. I was just giving my update, my report. But she wanted to know how I felt? I wasn’t prepared for that.

“Sheila,” I said. “I haven’t allowed myself to think about that in three-and-a-half days. This is going to take me a minute.”

As we continued to talk, I could feel myself coming back, slowly opening up. I felt and heard the tremor in my voice as I told her about the previous week, when we’d been at the Mayo Clinic. About learning the news and sharing it with family and friends. About the challenges with my mom.

My voice grew stronger, but still shaking, as I told her how unfair it was for him to work for his entire life in a concrete building when he loved the outdoors, only to retire and receive this news.

She told me she could hear the anger in my voice. I was angry. I am angry.

I saw a new group of friends over the recent weekend, and I didn’t know what mode to be in. I didn’t know if I should remain in my open, angry, devastated state or go back into work mode. I was scared to scare them away. I felt like there were two sides of me struggling, and I didn’t know how to be or who to be. Business-me wanted to be in control, because business-me didn’t hurt as much. But that side of me shuts down, doesn’t connect, doesn’t feel very human. I don’t connect with my family, with my husband, with my friends.

The other part is in so much pain and anger and despair. And I want there to be some middle ground. Some middle ground between the part that functions and the part that wants to crumble. I don’t want to go one way or the other. I want there to be more than two. I just have to find that.