Follow Up

Thankfully, the relatives I was worried about didn't all pass away on the same weekend, like I had feared. Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully.

My Grandmother did die today, though. Rough. It's really, really rough. I can feel the grief tight in my shoulders. I'm just waiting for myself to cry in more than micro-bursts, doing the mind-numbing things: aimless facebook browsing, listening to music a little too loud, writing... Hoping it will come on slow.

It feels like a lot has happened this year. A lot of amazingly joyful, wonderful things, and a darn good share of the sad, too.

Life--it keeps on moving.

This time I'm moving with it, instead of getting left behind.

I used to think death made me special.

     Experiencing it at a young age, that is. Both my Dad and my Grandfather, who we'd always lived with, passed away three days shy of six months from each other. A close family friend committed suicide just a few months after my Dad died. He was also my best friend's uncle. I remember trying to comfort her at the funeral as tears ran down her face, as though the loss of my father was something that gave me extra understanding. I understood the tears, but not the healing process that was to follow. I did my best, and was glad that I could be a comfort to her. The sharp memory of losing my Dad was eased as we rode from the funeral home to the cemetery, quite together in the backseat.

     For a long time, it made me feel separate from others that I'd see so much of death in such a compacted, young time of my life. It set me apart because no one else experienced what I did, the way I did. Time went on, and I met more and more people who had suffered their own losses, until I became an adult, watching other people's losses pile around me like misty skylines. Present, striking, but removed. I think I'd come to believe that since I'd had that many helpings of inundating death so early, I'd be free from any further meetings until I was, oh, surely, in my forties, at least.

     But people age, they get sick; they have to pass on at some point. In the last two years, I've lost my friend, who taught me soul-encompassing love for Christ. I've lost my Grandfather, the gruff teddy bear with a giant laugh. I've lost my Aunt Connie, an elect lady of compassion. We've lost our Step-grandma, full of smiles whenever we saw her. My paternal Grandmother has been to the hospital on and off for a few months, and now a few times in a week. My maternal Grandmother has been struggling for more than a year, with increased difficulty in the last week.

     

     Tonight? I received a text from my mother that my maternal Grandmother has had a heart attack, and it's time to say our final goodbyes. Hours later, news came that my husband's paternal Grandfather, who had Alzheimer's, has succumbed to the weakness of the flesh and breathed his last.

     Death doesn't make me special, it makes me human. It makes me feel and fear. It makes me recognize that people, especially loved ones, are not to be taken for granted. It makes me yearn to live fully before, in the distant future, I, too, follow these souls into the presence of God

     I'll admit it, I am afraid of the possibility of losing loved ones in quick succession once again. One at a time is hard enough. I'm surprised at the way my eyes wet, then dry, and wet again as I contemplate their movement onward, beyond the mortality that I know. I am afraid of being overwhelmed by grief, and also by maybe numbing myself to any of it, all at the same time. I feel what we all feel as we are faced with death--I feel everything. And feeling everything when faced with death is as unspecial as it gets.