A new year with snow coming in and Pop leaving out...
I'm home today, having canceled my clients. It looks like we're having our first snow, the soft, powdery kind that covers everything and isn't bothersome when you stand in it. I canceled them immediately because I couldn't be a therapist today, I couldn't listen to people's grief.
I'm suffering my own.
Originally, I wanted the first post of this year to be celebratory. I began 2017 in normal fashion, surrounded by Kayrin, Otter Bucket, Polynesia and Mr. Amish. We brought in the new year, barely seeing the announcement on TV. We had our new tree up and sat at the dining room table, playing a card game amid various drinks. We ordered pit beef the next day, then they gallivanted back to Pennsylvania. Fidget and I were quiet, doing laundry, spending some reflective time. I sat with my planners and planned a new year, reflecting on the cacophony that was 2016. Even though everyone seemed so damned mad at 2016, I was thankful our lives were beginning to stabilize. We paid off our credit card debt (!). I made plans to read books and attend a book club, attend some sober support meetings for work, and do papercraft.
I called my father on his birthday, the big 7-5. He enjoyed my song. I had a bit more pep in my step.
Pop was continually to be ill, but went out with Fidget on Wednesday for groceries. I called him Thursday, asking how he was feeling, and did he want to go to the reunion today since we weren't going to be able to go.
Yesterday, Fidget was going to take Pop to his PCP, a follow up and maybe something to finally kick this cold. Instead, Fidget found him passed away in his condo. We think I was the last to talk to him.
Fidget put me on the phone with the cop so I could give his DOB and his PCP's information to sign the death certificate.
My supervisor put me on a train and I traveled way out into the county, somewhere I had never traveled before. I called Caterpillar, as she and Trips discovered they would be having a daughter. I tried to be happy, but instead delivered a wracking sob. I called various people, my parents, then Fidget retrieved me and we went back to the condo where both his father, his girlfriend, and the body laid quietly in the condo.
We waited for the funeral home to come retrieve the body. I saw the Christmas card we had gotten him on the table. I found his extra keys, laid in the den under pictures of when I was inducted into Psi Chi or New Year's last year with Sadie.
I can't properly express this grief. I lost my own grandparents in 2001 and 2002. From March 2001 to fall of 2001 is pretty much a blur; I've seemed to black out most of that time, having suffered my own grief with the lost of my grandmother. I grew closer with my grandfather after I moved to PA, spending weekends with him and listening to his stories. Then he passed in the summer of 2002.
I've sporadically picked up other grandparents over the years, but Pop definitely was the one I was most involved with. I'd take him to the doctors' offices, he'd call me when he lost his keys, we'd gallivant to PA to see his sister. We'd share stories about Fidget, or when Pop was a young man of the Greatest Generation. Pop would ask about my mother, inquire as to how my father was doing. I'd bring over muffins and corn chowder; he'd send me home with a frittata.
There's no rush now, no funeral to be had. He'll be cremated, then will rest with his wife who passed almost six years ago to the day.
There won't be any card games between Pop and my mother once they move North. I won't be taking Pop to his doctors anymore. He won't sing at the medical assistant, saying I'm his "granddaughter-in-law elect" or thanking me for helping him as often as I did.
I know he's not blood, but I'm grieving in a way that says he was. I know his daughter will probably call me crying; the other has texted me to ask how Fidget is. We'll have some type of memorial when the other daughter can return from overseas, and I know I'll cry. I've been crying. My teeth and heart hurt.
I feel like I've lost someone who was soundly in my corner. And now, that side of his family will disintegrate. His father and girlfriend will move out West, and we'll probably never hear from them. His sister will probably not come over. It'll just be us.
When they first said they were moving, I started to experience my own loss because of them taking Pop. I was on the phone with his daughter, trying to figure out moving and end-of-life care and what Fidget and I could continue to commit to with his health. I didn't want them to take him. He is the only person on that side which made me feel like we were right and loved and appreciated.
I never told him which diploma frame to buy me for my Masters degree. He wanted that to be my present.
He never met Socks, but asked about the "old man cat" and how he was adapting to our lives.
I know there will be things that come up which will wrack me again. I know losing him is a hard way to start this year, but almost fitting. He won't move to New Mexico. He won't call me upset with the change. He won't die in a desert.
He died in his home that he had shared with his wife, the home he bought for them 20 years ago. The home where he took care of her when her Alzheimer's got so bad, she didn't remember him anymore. The home where he'd make frittatas and watch Ravens games. The home where the phone would ring and he'd say, "Hi, lover" and tell me grand stories of his son, his grandson, and how thankful he was to me...
... then hang up after saying, "I love you, too, sweetheart."
I'm suffering my own.
Originally, I wanted the first post of this year to be celebratory. I began 2017 in normal fashion, surrounded by Kayrin, Otter Bucket, Polynesia and Mr. Amish. We brought in the new year, barely seeing the announcement on TV. We had our new tree up and sat at the dining room table, playing a card game amid various drinks. We ordered pit beef the next day, then they gallivanted back to Pennsylvania. Fidget and I were quiet, doing laundry, spending some reflective time. I sat with my planners and planned a new year, reflecting on the cacophony that was 2016. Even though everyone seemed so damned mad at 2016, I was thankful our lives were beginning to stabilize. We paid off our credit card debt (!). I made plans to read books and attend a book club, attend some sober support meetings for work, and do papercraft.
I called my father on his birthday, the big 7-5. He enjoyed my song. I had a bit more pep in my step.
Pop was continually to be ill, but went out with Fidget on Wednesday for groceries. I called him Thursday, asking how he was feeling, and did he want to go to the reunion today since we weren't going to be able to go.
Yesterday, Fidget was going to take Pop to his PCP, a follow up and maybe something to finally kick this cold. Instead, Fidget found him passed away in his condo. We think I was the last to talk to him.
Fidget put me on the phone with the cop so I could give his DOB and his PCP's information to sign the death certificate.
My supervisor put me on a train and I traveled way out into the county, somewhere I had never traveled before. I called Caterpillar, as she and Trips discovered they would be having a daughter. I tried to be happy, but instead delivered a wracking sob. I called various people, my parents, then Fidget retrieved me and we went back to the condo where both his father, his girlfriend, and the body laid quietly in the condo.
We waited for the funeral home to come retrieve the body. I saw the Christmas card we had gotten him on the table. I found his extra keys, laid in the den under pictures of when I was inducted into Psi Chi or New Year's last year with Sadie.
I can't properly express this grief. I lost my own grandparents in 2001 and 2002. From March 2001 to fall of 2001 is pretty much a blur; I've seemed to black out most of that time, having suffered my own grief with the lost of my grandmother. I grew closer with my grandfather after I moved to PA, spending weekends with him and listening to his stories. Then he passed in the summer of 2002.
I've sporadically picked up other grandparents over the years, but Pop definitely was the one I was most involved with. I'd take him to the doctors' offices, he'd call me when he lost his keys, we'd gallivant to PA to see his sister. We'd share stories about Fidget, or when Pop was a young man of the Greatest Generation. Pop would ask about my mother, inquire as to how my father was doing. I'd bring over muffins and corn chowder; he'd send me home with a frittata.
There's no rush now, no funeral to be had. He'll be cremated, then will rest with his wife who passed almost six years ago to the day.
There won't be any card games between Pop and my mother once they move North. I won't be taking Pop to his doctors anymore. He won't sing at the medical assistant, saying I'm his "granddaughter-in-law elect" or thanking me for helping him as often as I did.
I know he's not blood, but I'm grieving in a way that says he was. I know his daughter will probably call me crying; the other has texted me to ask how Fidget is. We'll have some type of memorial when the other daughter can return from overseas, and I know I'll cry. I've been crying. My teeth and heart hurt.
I feel like I've lost someone who was soundly in my corner. And now, that side of his family will disintegrate. His father and girlfriend will move out West, and we'll probably never hear from them. His sister will probably not come over. It'll just be us.
When they first said they were moving, I started to experience my own loss because of them taking Pop. I was on the phone with his daughter, trying to figure out moving and end-of-life care and what Fidget and I could continue to commit to with his health. I didn't want them to take him. He is the only person on that side which made me feel like we were right and loved and appreciated.
I never told him which diploma frame to buy me for my Masters degree. He wanted that to be my present.
He never met Socks, but asked about the "old man cat" and how he was adapting to our lives.
I know there will be things that come up which will wrack me again. I know losing him is a hard way to start this year, but almost fitting. He won't move to New Mexico. He won't call me upset with the change. He won't die in a desert.
He died in his home that he had shared with his wife, the home he bought for them 20 years ago. The home where he took care of her when her Alzheimer's got so bad, she didn't remember him anymore. The home where he'd make frittatas and watch Ravens games. The home where the phone would ring and he'd say, "Hi, lover" and tell me grand stories of his son, his grandson, and how thankful he was to me...
... then hang up after saying, "I love you, too, sweetheart."