even in death our love goes on

Two years ago today I buried my grandfather.

I still forget that he’s gone. I start thinking about visiting my grandparents in Florida and he’s there. Actually he’s at their old house. I think of my grandmother in her apartment, but I see him at their house. I think of driving down there and going to their old house and talking with him. He was so intelligent and wise. I loved talking to him, bouncing ideas off of him. I was only just coming into the maturity of being able to discuss my future with adults when he died. Adults who cared about me and could offer good advice to me.

“…when he died.” Do you know what I hate? The various politically correct ways we have of saying someone died. They’ve moved on. They’ve passed. They’re no longer with us. They died. Finality. Coldness? No, reality. He had a heart attack and then heart surgery. Two weeks later, he died. His heart stopped beating and he DIED. No matter how they come to it – suicide, car accident, medical condition – the end result is all the same. They are dead.

Why does that bother me so much? People deal with death different ways. They call it, label it differently to find a way to cope with it. I don’t think my way is really any better or that I’m farther along in my grief. Its just different. But I still hate the fact that death has to be politically correct. Its death. There’s no two ways of looking at it. The person that was here is no longer here as that person. I don’t care if you believe in reincarnation, heaven, hell, nirvana or nil. That person is no longer here the way they were before. Nothing is as final as death. There is nothing else in the world that ends everything the way death does. No break-up, no goodbye, nothing is as permanent as death.

There’s no coming back from death. There’s no sorry, apologies to Hades, no turning around. As much as it hurt when Matt died and as much as it hurt when Danny died, it hurt nothing like when Tim broke away from me. Matt and Danny still haunt me. They are still in my thoughts, my dreams, waking and sleeping. But I’m never afraid of them, or afraid of them stepping back into my reality and disrupting my life. They will stay in their shadow world, watching over me. I miss them terribly, just like I miss my grandfather. I even forget I can’t just pick up the phone and call them whenever I want. And there’s still a hole in my chest sometimes when I think about them. Maybe its not so much that Tim’s break-up hurt more, it just hurt differently. That pain changes too, as Tim changes. As he grows up and moves on and becomes something different, it hurts differently each time I hear of his progress. But Matt, Danny, my grandfather – they are frozen in time, suspended in memories. Their lives don’t change; their lives are over. They are dead.

And I really have no idea where this entry came from.

Give me a reason to believe that you’re gone
I see your shadow so I know they’re all wrong
Moonlight on the soft brown earth
It leads me to where you lay
They took you away from me but now I’m taking you home

I will stay forever here with you
My love
The softly spoken words you gave me
Even in death our love goes on

Some say I’m crazy for my love, Oh my love
But no bonds can hold me from your side, Oh my love
They don’t know you can’t leave me
They don’t hear you singing to me

I will stay forever here with you
My love
The softly spoken words you gave me
Even in death our love goes on

And I can’t love you, anymore than I do

People die, but real love is forever.

Even in Death ~ Evanescence