How missing works...

[nwhiker]

I miss my kids when they are off on adventures without me. I've been training myself to not look at the train wreck AC is making of her life, so I'm avoiding thinking of her, but I do tend to miss her when I can think about how much fun she used to be (over the past 6 months, I think I might have seen her three times, and she's dragged dipshit along each time), and how easy our family relationship was. As Perry told me "I barely think of her as part of the family any more. She's made it clear that she has written us off as meaningful in her life."

Anyhow.

Dh.

I miss him.

We're not apart often, and when we've been it's mostly been for fun things, and while I missed him then, I didn't miss him. I suspect he felt the same when I was visiting with my dad before his death. It's not just missing, it's the profound wrongness of not being with the person you love at a time when they need support and caring.

And ugh, I suck. Group text with dh, his sister, mother, FIL's cousin, S, and me. Dh was talking about the oncologist and his morning, and I shoot back a series of texts with the questions he fucking needs to get answers to, and my strategies for getting doctors in hospitals to fucking PAY ATTENTION to me (I'm very polite, I don't yell at them!) In the meanwhile, my SIL is posting soothing texts reminding him to eat properly, get sleep, take time for himself, and maybe even get a massage (the latter is about as likely as dh going to the Albuquerque Zoo and throwing himself into the lion's cage). The cousin now probably thinks I am the Wicked Bitchy Spouse of the West and thank goodness his little sister cares about his well-being.

I know that's not totally accurate, but I feel guilty. I should have been more support, less drill sergeant sending him on a mission to acquire information by any means necessary. In my defense, when AC was in the hospital, we found that as a parent team needing to get info about our kid's treatment, we worked pretty well together. I was pretty good at getting information out of the doctors, classifying it to get the bigger picture, and presenting that to dh, who was then excellent at seeing the next question that needed to be asked.

So yeah, I do miss him. And I wish I could be there for him.