on goodbyes
My grandfather died today. I've been expecting it for several weeks now, but the news was still rather sudden and, well, unexpected. He's been sick for years, and it's really better that he's not anymore. I remember him from my childhood as a robust, inexplicably large man - large in the sense that he just seemed so much bigger than everything around him. He was ever cheerful, ever amused, and spoiled me terribly without a twinge of regret. I love him so much more than it's possible to say, and I really thought his loss would affect me more.
Truth is, I'm just...okay. I'm okay with my grandfather's death. When I got the news, I was taken by surprise, and I had to sit down in order to talk to my father on the phone so I could focus on him and not weaving my way across a college campus. It's so odd to think that he died at the exact moment I was leaving my last class of the day - while my professor was discussing the legendary birth of Romulus and Remus, my grandfather was...well, dying. I think I might remember that irony for the rest of my life.
But that's it, though. I'll remember the irony, but that's probably all I'll remember. I'm terrible at dates, so in a few years I probably won't remember the exact day he died unless someone reminds me or it's written on a calendar. Hell, I can't even remember birthdays without prompting. Right now the moment seems so vivid to me - October 26, 2010, at 3:15 in the afternoon - but someday it'll be just another day. I'll have moved on, and when I think about his death, I'll think, I was talking about the birth of the Roman empire when my grandfather died.
I'm not devastated. I'm barely even upset. I thought I would be. I thought I'd cry. Maybe I will, later. I think I'm just sort of resigned to the idea of not having him anymore, and I think maybe it hasn't quite sunk it yet. I might start crying on the flight to Boston and not be able to stop. I might never cry about it, ever. Because the fact is that I will get over it. The world hasn't stopped, my life hasn't flipped upside-down. I still have papers due Tuesday and Thursday next week; I still have to make up the class time I'm missing. Things are exactly the same as before, with the exception that I won't speak to my grandfather on the phone this Thanksgiving, or Veteran's Day, or Christmas, or my birthday, or see him sitting in the audience at my college graduation come the spring. He'll never see my brother become a Marine. He won't read my first published novel. But all those things will still happen without him.
I miss him. I always will. I love him, and always will. I'll remember him always too, and perhaps in time I'll cry for him, for the memory of a man who used to feed me ice cream way too late at night, who made the best spaghetti I've ever tasted, who made funny faces at me and let me explore his tomato garden and helped me put a baby bird back in its nest when I found it under the tree in the yard. Everything will keep going, and it'll all be okay.
And hey, there's always Timeheart.