Say What you Need to Say

Dear Mary Q,

It’s been exactly three weeks since you passed away. And I would be lying if I told you that I didn’t miss you all the time. Most days I just try to cover it up with bitterness about something else. That’s how I always deal with difficult things. Sometimes I even listen to your voice (I still have a message you left me about a year ago). And it makes me want to call you back, even though I am very sure I did (although probably not as soon as I should have).

I’m scared to go home again, you know. Because it will make me feel like I should go and see you. I never did stay with you like I always promised. I think I was scared you would yell at me– you were always angry at the end. I hope you will forgive me for that.

And when it happened (your death) I joked a lot and said that you were probably pissed off because we had to see you the way you were (I am sorry, but you def. looked like shit gram). I know at one point you were scared of it (looking like shit when you died). But I can’t help secretly thinking that you somehow moved passed it all, like a wall of rain. I mean, we are all scared of dying alone. Scared of dying without being remembered. Finding at our end that we are superfluous.

You were never that, to any of us. (Superfluous I mean).

And each day that you aren’t here, I find myself being reminded of that. Because, you were always so proud of us. Even if our accomplishment wasn’t something we felt proud of. And, you were always teachings us. I mean, it was what you were the most good at. I can’t even read a book without thinking of you anymore. I think I always wanted to read because it meant more time with you. Time with your Parliament Lights, a warm hug, a good book, and your long soft finger nails that I always wanted and admired as we read (in the living room, on the chair, by the window, in my childhood house). I remember when you read the beginning of my first “novel.” I know it wasn’t very good, but you still found things about it that you liked. And, I always hoped one day you’d be able to buy a book I had written just to say, “My Granddaughter wrote this.”

Maybe, if there is a Heaven, you can pre-order the book from Amazon and tell all your new heaven, scrabble playing friends, “Hey my granddaughter is going to write this.”

I love you so much, gram.

Sincerely,
Your loving granddaughter

P.S.
I miss you

P.P.S.
“It’s difficult to understand the sum of a persons life. Some people will tell you it’s measured by the one’s left behind. Some believe life is measured in faith. Some say by love. Other folks says life has no meaning at all. Me? I believe you measure yourself, by the people that measure themselves by you.”-the bucket list

Memory, all alone in the moonlight…

I missed you today Gram. I still feel like you are here, even though I know you aren’t.

Really, I just think that I don’t want you to really be gone.

You were always proud of us…

You’re already a bastard. You might as well be an enlightened one.

It’s nice to sit with her. Yet still scary all the same.

Sometimes I just have to remove myself from reality.

It’s just too real.

I’d much rather live my own.

chorus romance sings goodnight

Someone told me once, “The heart is wild thing that needs to be controlled.” And, I am not sure that I have ever actually realized how true this is until now. I mean, its such a simple way of putting something that I see a lot of my friends struggling with.

I mean, why is it that we do things that we know are wrong for us? Like a few weeks back I was totally thinking of trying to make something happen that I knew I shouldn’t. I knew it wasn’t right, for so many reasons.

And I think sometimes we just don’t realize how wild the heart is. Like when we love. I can say for sure, that I have never felt love feel so wild before now. Meaning, the love I have for my grandmother. It’s a longing, for the two hearts to be connected once again (physically).

And the hardest part of it all, now that it is beginning to sink in, is that I may never ever see her again for the rest of eternity. I can’t even fathom it. I have never not known her in my life, and it is now that I understand by Pooh tells piglet, that if he (piglet) lives to be 100, he wishes to be 100 minus one day, so that he will never have to live without him.” I never want to experience the pain that comes with death again. All the unsaid words, the days of frustration that should have been passed off- and filled instead with reassurances that you are loved.

It’s been a week since she passed. And I still can’t get out of my head her last breath. Sitting there originally, holding her hand, while she was too weak to hold back. Getting up, so that my mother could sit with her for her final moment, even though she was gone before her last breath began.

I wonder what it was like– that death. And now more than ever I feel as though even if I were a Christian, I couldn’t believe that I would see her again. For I believe that statement began as comfort– and I believe it really to be deceit. Meaning, I do not really think my grandmother can hear me now, although I would love to believe she could. But I mean, if death is merely the escaping of energy from your body source to something else– or better put: the next step– you aren’t worried about those that you have left on earth. You are looking more for your journey forward. Wondering if those that were taken from you are around, and wondering what the hell is happening to you.

I mean, that’s how I see it.

And it doesn’t make it easier.

I miss her SO much.

remember me…remember me… i will be with you in your dreams.

Grandma died this morning— almost two hours ago (although not quite—1:26am and it is now 3:16am). And unlike the many ways that death has been presented to me since birth it was nothing like my hamster being cold, and my trying to resuscitate him. Nor was it like when I found my favorite bird (of the two) stone cold and flat at the bottom of the cage.

No she was more limp- still with her mouth hanging open.

And yes, I am sad. And yes, I am having my moments of tears. However- I am not sure why. Just thinking or saying, “My grandma died,” makes me cry. And its the first time in a while (as I think I may have mentioned previously) that I am not sure why I am feeling the way I do. It’s this unexplainable sadness, that goes away and comes back when it feels like it. A sadness that I cannot control because I do not know its source. Am I sad that she is gone? Am I sad just because death is sad? I don’t know, really. But I keep replaying her telling me a few days ago that she loved me. But it wasn’t the casual, “I love you.” It was an “I love you….” from me and then a “and I love you….I do. Very much.”

And you know I think she was gone before the 1:26am mark. Everyone said she waited for my uncle— what I think she waited for was my brother on the phone with her. Of course she didn’t talk but the second my sister-in-law said, “JM’s on the phone Mary” she sat right up and opened her eyes– which she soon shut.

But for her, I think she just needed to tie up that end (my brother).

I took the rosary beads over her bed. They said the priest might have given them to her, but really I am not sure where they came from. I just know that I held them until she passed.

Anyway— the funeral is either friday or monday. Although– I don’t know why it can’t be on a Saturday? But whatever.

I should go to bed—

I am OK— a little uncomfortable but OK.

People acting like they ain’t got no mama…

I have to work today— in like 45 mins. which means I have to leave in 10. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

Of course.

Anyway– not much has been going on here. I think I am just stuck. Not in a good or bad place. Just in some place. In a routine (and we all know how I hate those). In the words of American Beauty, “There is nothing worse in life than being ordinary.”

I feel like I am thinking about so much, but I can’t sort it all out here yet. Some are uncertainties. Some are those things that are soooo wrong but sooooo good. Impatience. Patience. Exhaustion. Just everything. I still feel like the world should be beautiful (among it’s hurting and loneliness) and I feel like I am taking it all in but that it’s not being sorted. Like my brain is cramped up.

Actually in a way I think I take comfort in my routine, because it comes and then goes, and does this quickly.

And now I must end this totally random mess of words.

Excuse my poppycock.