I can’t really talk about it to Tony. He’s preoccupied with so many things and he doesn’t want to deal with me or my “drama” as he probably thinks of it, but the truth is that I’m sad. I’m sad and I feel dazed and unsure of what to do about it. My granddad died. He was here one minute. Alive, breathing, here on this earth and now he’s gone. I didn’t expect to be this upset over it. We hadn’t seen each other for a long time and I had never made a point of calling him or catching up or in anyway being an active part of his life. I guess that’s what a lot of grandchildren do, but we were close. We were connected in a way I didn’t really think about. I just felt it when I knew it was leaving. Felt it with the panic that comes with knowing that you’re about to lose something that you love. The connection was something I cant explain. It’s just something that I know is true. It’s something that’s hard to really put my head or mouth around. It was just there. A connection, a feeling, love. It’s more than love, it’s like a meeting of spirit, a recognition and understanding of somebody’s soul. I really felt that with him. I didn’t appreciate it. I didn’t think about it much, but it was there. It was there and now it’s gone and I’m so heartbroken about it. Ken said that deaths in the family not only make you reflect on the life of the one who died, but also of our own mortality and that, inevitably, it is a good thing. I think that’s true and I’m glad for it, but that doesn’t touch on all of it. It also makes you think and feel darker, sadder things. It’s something in the pit of my stomach, in the depths of my heart, it makes a whole in the spirit, and I just want to cry and cry until I can’t cry anymore. I want to run away. I want to hit something really hard. To break something. To throw the shit out of something. To pull my hair out and rip all of my clothes. I feel despair. I am sad. I start to wonder what the point of life is. And it’s a feeling I don’t want to let go of. A feeling that makes me feel more alert in some ways than I normally am. More understanding of the importance of things and that most things aren’t. And yet, every time, I think I’m in a good place, I just start thinking about the life that was once here and isn’t anymore and I’m sad again.
It makes me think that my granddad was young once. He met a young girl he fell in love with and he married her. And they had moments. Just like I have them with Tony. They had tender moments and laughter. They kissed and held each other in their arms and they had sex. They spent time together, woke up and drank coffee together, ate breakfast, stared out windows together and sometimes, all they needed was each other. Sometimes, they had lovely, beautiful moments that reminded them why they fell in love in the first place. Sometimes, my granddad must have looked at the sky or a tree or his children or the ocean or into his wife’s big blue eyes and taken a deep breath and thought that life was beautiful. He had all of that. Beautiful, heart breaking moments, and then one day, it was all gone. Just gone. And I can’t wrap my head around that. I can’t get over it. Can’t come to terms with it. I can’t make my peace with it. I’m angry and sick with it. And I don’t think I’ll ever find a way to accept it. Maybe not ever.
