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johnvstheworld · 8 years

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John vs. Death

A few weeks before Grammie passed away it became clear the time was coming. I didn’t know how to deal with it or talk about it so I just opened an email draft and started typing. I kept that up for the past month or so. Some days I’d write two or three times, whatever came into my head or my heart, and sometimes I’d go days in between. I never intended to share these. Just getting it out made me feel better. That power has sort of faded though, and I felt a strong desire to share them. I don’t know if it matters or not either way. The entries aren’t dated, and this is mostly unedited.

I feel mostly empty, but that's just the only word I can think of.

I'm also trying to draw something out of me. Like I can't turn the music up loud enough. If my ears hurt, if the noise drowned out the silence inside, I'd feel better. It would be gone.

I've wanted to cry for a while, and it comes sometimes, but not totally. I haven't wept. I don't think I will. But I want to.

A shower is usually my place to clear my head. Instead I keep eulogizing people. I come out worse than before, and feel shamed because I don’t think it's my place to capture that. I know I'm not really capturing anything. I know I'm just trying to work through it, like I keep a diary. I should keep a diary. Sometimes I want to preserve all my thoughts and sometimes I want to burn them. I think both would be productive. But you can't do both. So I don't write it down. I commit it to memory, then bury it deep.

I'm writing this right now because I don't know what else to do.

Death should be quick. Accidents. I'm grateful that life can last long. Life should be long. Death should be quick.

I still don't wish death to be drawn out, but I am glad to have the chance to say goodbye and to reckon with it. My only concern has been how she is, if she is scared. It's strange that, I know she is dying, that she will never be better, but I want her to be okay. I want her to have no fear, no anxiety, no worry. I'm scared that because she wasn't able to really communicate the last few days/weeks, she's had to deal with everything on her own; that she hasn't been able to talk it out, or share her thoughts or feelings. And honestly, I don't know if she would. I think probably not. But at the end people can change; people can become more open, more willing, more raw. Or maybe she'd struggle silently anyway. Maybe she isn't struggling. Maybe she's been preparing. I know she's been preparing, but I also know she's been scared.

I'm thankful Pap has been able to be there so much. He fell and hurt himself, and has been halfway bedridden. I hate that he can't be by her side 24 hours. I hate that she worries about him.

Johnny started with the "why's" about a week ago. It has made reading small books, books we've been reading for ages, a new tedious adventure, extremely drawn out. I indulge his curiosity, of course, but it can still be grating. I'm glad he's started with the why's because when we told him Grammie was dying, and he asked why, it felt like he was really trying to understand.

Johnny was Grammie's last baby. He was her baby. She taught him so much. He's been ahead of schedule, advanced in his vocabulary and his reasoning and identifying and whatever else, and that's all because of her. Nicki and I do okay, but part of me thinks she taught him everything he knows, that he is a product of her love and her patience and her care. When I struggle with him or with Archie I find myself wondering how Grammie would handle the situation. She loved him so much, and he loved her so much. He would stand by the window and wait for her and Pap to come each morning, and have books ready for them to read to him.

I'm thankful and grateful for how much help they offered. I'm grateful and thankful to have had that relationship with them, a more adult relationship. The thoughtfulness and care she had. She was a wonderful woman. I hope she has peace and comfort.

I'm grateful I had the opportunity to tell her how much she meant to me. I wrote this in a card for her for Christmas 2014, the first after Johnny was born.

"Sometimes a grandmother’s love may be taken for granted or assumed. It can be displayed any number of ways: through toys, smiles, hugs, snacks, back to school shopping trips, vacations, and even sanctuary. All of those things are appreciated, and often prized, yet because a grandmother’s love is constant, present all your life, it can be regarded as a given. It is a source of warmth that can take years to comprehend, because comprehending it isn’t really necessary or the point of it. It’s pure, and without compromise. Such things don’t need explained or defined.

We cannot begin to thank you for all that you’ve done these past months. Your presence in our lives, and in our house, makes living easier and, many days, tidier. What is hardest to thank you for is what I have tried to describe above, your love. A grandmother’s love is special, and may be assumed, but a great-grandmother’s love is unique because it can be thrust upon the unsuspecting, and can be viewed from the outside as well. We appreciate that you watch the boy, but we’re thankful for the love he receives.

For being Grammie, for the way you play your role as great-grandmother with such grace and enthusiasm, for the love you’ve always shown us, and for the love you have for Johnny, we wanted to say thank you.

Love,

John – Nicole – Johnny "

The way a baby's head smells like her perfume after she's rocked him to sleep. You'd always know if Grammie was over.

One thing about Grammie - and this might sound materialistic, but it's not meant to be and it isn't - she always gave good gifts. Not expensive gifts necessarily, just good ones. Things you would like. Nice sweaters. Not fancy sweaters or expensive sweaters, nice ones that you'd wear, that were your style. She knew you. Books you would like and would become meaningful to you. She didn't give many books, but the ones she did stuck.

I have images that I specifically burned into my head. Her walking with Johnny out to the flower beds to weed. Her in her chair. Her at my kitchen sink. The sounds are vaguer. I can hear her singing voice, softly to babies, but I don't know the words or the tune. I hear her yelling down the stairs from the kitchen when I was a kid. I hear her short way of saying bye and reminding me of something small but important where her voice trails and is cut off as she comes in for a kiss on the cheek.

I cried the other night. I cried last night also. When I try to say something I'm thinking out loud I get overwhelmed. I have so many things I want to say, so I'm just jotting them down here. I don't know if it helps or not, but I'm currently unable to say them, so this is the best I can do.

Everything is difficult. Like, the day doesn't make sense. It feels wrong to be doing anything. It feels wrong to be working. Wrong to be cooking. When we went to see her everyone was there. I needed to talk to her. I needed just a moment. I'm going to try today or tomorrow. I just want to tell her that she was a great woman and a caring woman and I want to be like her and I appreciate everything she did and we're all better because of her.

Grammie died yesterday, 2/27/2017, around 3:00 PM I guess. I think her being so close to the end the last week made her eventual passing not as hard. This sounds very mechanical.

Some Things I'll Miss:

Calling down there and hearing Pap yell "Sally!" when I ask to speak to her.

Her handwriting, smooth and steady cursive, not fancy. Her G's and P's and m’s I'll miss most of all. Maybe J's.

Grammie was also great because you knew she cared but she never pried. I remember Nicki and I had to live apart for a few weeks after we were married because of job stuff and she could tell I wasn't doing well with it. She didn't make a show of it, or buy me ice cream or a sweatshirt or anything. She just said, "You don't look too happy," and she was right and I said, "No not really, but I guess it's okay." She nodded that yes it would be, and I felt better. It was like two sentences, but just talking to someone about it for a second was enough, and she knew it was enough. She knew what was needed.

I've been doing much better about it over the last week. Small things were creeping up on me, and I guess they still will. I was washing the dishes and got a sad remembering her standing over the sink. I was sitting on the floor in the nursery and got sad remembering her sitting on the floor in the nursery stacking blocks. It was only a year-year and a half ago she was sitting on the floor and playing and reading to babies.

The one that has overwhelmed me the most, and more than once, was having to sing a baby to sleep. I could hear her doing it. I remembered having to sing Johnny to sleep for a nap with her just out in the living room and feeling a little embarrassed, but also kind of proud she got to hear and see me do daddy things. And now she won't anymore, and that's okay. But it made me sad thinking about how happy that might have made her, and how happy it made me. But it's okay.

One reason this hurt so much, almost more than I thought it ever would, was that it was kind of unexpected. I never thought she'd be the first to go. I guess I never thought she'd go, now that I'm thinking of it. She was supposed to be here and be a rock through other losses, other tragedies, other life stuff. She was supposed to be the example, and be strong, and know the right thing to do, the right way to act. It's like there isn't an adult around. And I know that's not true, but that's how it feels.

I wasn't really sure how much Johnny understood, or how much it affected him. As the days have gone on, it seems like it's done more than I originally thought. We went down there over the weekend and he asked where Grammie was and I had to tell him again that she died and the why's started and I said because she was old. He was sad. Later he asked Nicki if she was going to die. He found a sign he had made weeks ago and wanted to give it to Grammie and I said how sweet that was but gently reminded him that he can't, and he was upset, he was quiet. He didn't want the sign anymore, said he wanted to put it into the ground, and then he changed the subject.

A friend of Nicole's got a book for him about feelings you might feel when someone you love dies and how it is okay to feel those. We've read it a few times. He asks questions. It seems like he's starting to understand the mechanics of it, that she's gone and not coming back. The feelings part he's still unsure of, and honestly so am I. The book has helped me though. It's for toddlers. Maybe I should talk to someone.

I saw her obituary today and reading it in print at first felt like a relief, like something official. There wasn't a regular service, there will be a memorial later, but I guess those things are important for having some kind of closure.

I cleaned the floors today and thought of her. Johnny was complaining his socks were wet and it reminded me of when she’d clean the carpets and you wouldn’t realize it until your socks were soaking wet so you just took them off and laid on the couch for like an hour because you didn’t want your feet to get wet again.

I guess I’m doing better. It’s not the first thing on my mind all the time, and that it’s not is kind of sad, but that’s the way it goes, and it’s ultimately for the best I guess. I still think about it often though, about her, but when I do it’s not with a heaviness; the memories have more joy to them. It feels positive.

I used to be scared of ghosts, of big dark places like my grandparents’ house at night. It was quiet, except when the grandfather clock rang out throughout the night. It sounded and felt like something from an old movie, like it would wake spirits. Old pictures lined the stairway, black, white, and faded, of people I didn’t recognize who were long dead. I don’t know about all eight year olds, but I could talk myself into being frightened or nervous pretty easily, and this imagery didn’t help.

I’m not scared of ghosts anymore. I used to believe in them but not anymore. All that fear has been stripped away because I welcome it. Now I wish I was haunted. Instead of rushing through a silent house late at night or lying in bed unwilling to get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, instead of having to shake off the dread from an innocent draft, I wish I was haunted. I wish I could feel her beside me as I rock a baby, or after I yell out of frustration. But there’s nothing tangible, no chills from the outside. The memories of her are starting to gather into an essence though.

I guess this is what people talk about when they say people will stay with you. I don’t feel her above me or beside me, but in my head I hear whispers of her voice and can guess at her advice or her reactions for different situations. I can try to use that, a combination of thoughts and opinions and attitudes all rolled into something internalized… I think I’m rambling now.

#johnvstheworld

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