Can't you please just let it go?

Well, Crazyfriend is doing it to me again.

Here's the deal:
Crazyfriend cannot and will not let anything go. Ever. She clings to the past and wants everything to be the "way it was". And it's worse when something dies.

Her parents passed away several years ago. It was very traumatic for her and she is still feeling tremendous guilt. She never felt like she did enough to take care of them (even though she spent an entire 5 years of her life doing NOTHING but looking after them.) She wanted AUTOPSIES done on them (They were in their late 80's and the doctors just looked at her like she had just landed from Mars). She spent years in counseling which did no good whatsoever. She simply will not move forward with her life. She still keeps their ashes in the living room, which she has turned into a shrine with pictures and flowers and the fancy urns. (It's kinda creepy actually.)

She went through a very bad divorce about 5 years ago after 5 years of a miserably unhappy and unfortunate marriage. (She was just as much to blame as he was but that was never discussed). She still feels guilty and feels like it was her fault that she didn't do enough to hold it together. She would still like to talk to me about it but I won't go there.

She still talks about her BFF from high school (42 years ago) who committed suicide as if she is still there and wonders what she could have done differently.

And it gets worse when an animal dies.

That's where this story starts.

Whenevr an animal dies, Crazyfriend wants to have an "autopsy". She wants to know why it died. So she can help other people who have animals with the same problem/ She wants to write a book about it. She wants to write a pamphlet and send it to vets so they will now about the problem. (She never actually DOES any of these things but this is what she says she wants to do. ) She once kept a dead cat wrapped in foil in her freezer for almost a week before she could find a vet who would do a necropsy on a dead cat.

She picks up dead animals in the road and will carry them home in the trunk of her car to bury them because she feels it is undignifed and dispectful to be squashed roadkill. She has her little roadkill kit that she keeps in the trunk...a shovel, gloves, plastic bags. And she keeps the number of the Highway Depatment on speed dial on her cell phone if she sees an animal that is too big for her to pick up. She stops at the grocery store and looks at the "Lost Pet" bulletins and then if she sees a dead dog or cat in the road she stops and checks to see if it matches the desrciption of any lost animal she knows about.

So what is going on now?

Well, about 3 months ago one of our little kitty cats died. She had been sick for a long time so it was not unexpected and frankly, she went very peacefully. It was a cold rainy night, she was curled up in her box and she just went to sleep. End of story, right. Sad, the kitty died. Bye bye kitty. Hope you're happy in Kitty Heaven.

No such deal. Hubby and I went out in the morning and buried the kitty cat, the same as we would any of our pets. That's it. We had the $2.49 funeral (That's the top of the line around here...you get a sheet wrapped around you and you get a nice little grave marker.). We have buried countless animals in just the same way and then it's over. It's done. Right> Wrong.

Crazyfriend was infuriated that I didn't call her when the cat died. It was 11:00 on a cold and rainy night for Pete's sake...what was she going to do? Rush out here?

AND she was totally undone when we told her we'd buried that cat. She wanted to take the cat to the Clemson University Agricultural Research Lab to try and get the vets there to do a necropy. And I mean she was UPSET...not just a little. She was totally upset.

NOW....she is convinced that I am creating my own little shrine to the dead kitty cat.

I promise you, I am not. But to Crazyfriend it apparently looks that way. And she just will not let it go. This is a dead CAT we are talking about. And she comes out with new flowers every couple of weeks. She planted a TREE in the cat's memory. She wants to plant flowers in the spring. It's a CAT....it's not her granny.

I don't know. I will never convince CrazyFriend that this is NOT a little shrine to the memory of the dead cat. And she will simply not let go and move on. Even her therapist said that. She clings to the past, wallowingin guilt and sense of loss.

I know it doesn't hurt anything to put flowers out.

But it is a dead CAT that she won't let go of . Or anything else.

She needs a new and better therapist.

The pathology of this whole way of thinking seems overwhelming to me.

I want to move on with my life, not spend every minute wondering what I could have done differently to change how the past played out.