reality setting in...
last night, two hours after having passed out drunk, i recieved a phone call. the doctors at the home where my grandmother is had called my father and told him to go in, because she wasn't going to make it through the night.
i've been awake since, writing, reading. i walked down to broadway on colfax, and sat in front of the mint and watched the sun rise with my cell phone in my hand awaiting bad news. i felt the city coming to life. this shouldn't be this hard.
she never was a strong woman physically. short of stature with a shock of white hair has been the only way i've ever known her. but one would be a fool to call her meek. she radiates a sense of calm. always has. even when i visited her the last time i was home, and she had fallen and broken her hip and my mother was in a constant state of panic, she managed to indirectly take the stress out of the situation. even while talking to me assuming that i was my older brother. but more then that, there was always a fire in her eyes. an intensity that held the power of command. i never saw her unleash her anger, but heard many stories.
and i sat there, this morning, contemplating what it means to me to have been absent from the last years of her life. thinking back to the last time she actually recognised me. thinking back to the times i went over to her house as a child, and completely ignored her only to race down to the pond to catch turtles or ice skate. and then in high school when my sister would get her talking about geneology, and sitting and listening her talk for hours upon hours about relatives. she had a mind like a vice for familial details. and it occured to me that i never knew my grandmother. i never asked her anything at all about herself. i don't know who she was thirty years ago, i don't know how she felt about politics, i don't know if she ever studied a different language.
turning that over in my head a thousand times while watching the dawn of a new day, i realized that it wasn't true. i might not have known specific details about her life. but i sure as hell know a lot about who she was, because of what she instilled in my family. work ethic. responsibility. stubbornness. and a very passive but incredibly strong way of showing love.
while i sit here writing and trying to express what the fuck i'm feeling right now, it occurs to me that i shouldn't. but this is my only outlet. if i were at home, i could visit her even just to feel that feeling in her presence one more time. or have my brothers around to get drunk with. or sit at my parents dinner table having a long drawn out conversation of four words over two hours with my dad. see, where i'm from people don't express in words, or at least my family doesn't. not about feelings. not about loss. to them, it's another hardship and they tuck it under their hat and continue on til the next one.
there's so much i want to write about, and have today, but i just can't get it all out. and maybe that's really what this is all about for me. that regardless of how much i write, how i try to put context around this feeling, it will come nothing close to the moment i look into my fathers eyes and see his pain.
i feel nothing but the desire to distract myself, for fucks sake that's what i've been doing the past two weeks straight. why stop now?
i've been awake since, writing, reading. i walked down to broadway on colfax, and sat in front of the mint and watched the sun rise with my cell phone in my hand awaiting bad news. i felt the city coming to life. this shouldn't be this hard.
she never was a strong woman physically. short of stature with a shock of white hair has been the only way i've ever known her. but one would be a fool to call her meek. she radiates a sense of calm. always has. even when i visited her the last time i was home, and she had fallen and broken her hip and my mother was in a constant state of panic, she managed to indirectly take the stress out of the situation. even while talking to me assuming that i was my older brother. but more then that, there was always a fire in her eyes. an intensity that held the power of command. i never saw her unleash her anger, but heard many stories.
and i sat there, this morning, contemplating what it means to me to have been absent from the last years of her life. thinking back to the last time she actually recognised me. thinking back to the times i went over to her house as a child, and completely ignored her only to race down to the pond to catch turtles or ice skate. and then in high school when my sister would get her talking about geneology, and sitting and listening her talk for hours upon hours about relatives. she had a mind like a vice for familial details. and it occured to me that i never knew my grandmother. i never asked her anything at all about herself. i don't know who she was thirty years ago, i don't know how she felt about politics, i don't know if she ever studied a different language.
turning that over in my head a thousand times while watching the dawn of a new day, i realized that it wasn't true. i might not have known specific details about her life. but i sure as hell know a lot about who she was, because of what she instilled in my family. work ethic. responsibility. stubbornness. and a very passive but incredibly strong way of showing love.
while i sit here writing and trying to express what the fuck i'm feeling right now, it occurs to me that i shouldn't. but this is my only outlet. if i were at home, i could visit her even just to feel that feeling in her presence one more time. or have my brothers around to get drunk with. or sit at my parents dinner table having a long drawn out conversation of four words over two hours with my dad. see, where i'm from people don't express in words, or at least my family doesn't. not about feelings. not about loss. to them, it's another hardship and they tuck it under their hat and continue on til the next one.
there's so much i want to write about, and have today, but i just can't get it all out. and maybe that's really what this is all about for me. that regardless of how much i write, how i try to put context around this feeling, it will come nothing close to the moment i look into my fathers eyes and see his pain.
i feel nothing but the desire to distract myself, for fucks sake that's what i've been doing the past two weeks straight. why stop now?