Missing You

I was writing an entry, but lost it when I got booted.  Oh, well.  I read in Melanie’s diary how a relative of hers has recently passed away in some very upsetting circumstances.  She wrote how it hadn’t quite hit her yet, but now it has, and she’s working on coming to terms with it.

I’m pretty much the opposite, I realize.  Things hit me immediately.  Take Karen, or my Grandpa.  I wasn;t very close to either of them, but Grandpa was the first family member to die while I was alive, and knew what was going on.  (I feel I have to add that, because I believe I had a great grandfather who died when I was about two months old.)

I always felt, though, that time was just biding it’s time, waiting to see who would kick off first, my Nana, or Grandpa.  He’d been going in and out of the hospital for a long time.  He had a stroke when I was about ten, and if my aunt hadn’t been there, he would have died then.  She saved his life.  She called 911, and they were able to save him, though it was touch and go there for awhile.

I recall, though, a day or two before he died, my mom had said that no way was he going to.  He was too stubborn to die.  And that comforted me.  I figured he’d make it through this one, like all the rest.  Maybe he wasn’t in the best shape, but he’d live.

 . . .  He didn’t live.  He died, and as soon as I realized that’s what Grandma was telling Mom and me over the phone, I hung up as quietly as I could, fell to my knees, and sobbed.  I think I was honestly crying for over two hours.  I just couldn’t seem to stop.  I just couldn’t help thinking of all the thinsg he’d never done, or been able to do, I wondered if he’d ever heard me sing, I wondered so many things.  I wondered if he was in Heaven, and if he could finally see what I looked like.

My grandpa was blind.  From the time he was in his twenties.  He was only able to see my mom for about the first two or three years of her life, and he never saw my aunt, his second daughter.  He never saw me, or my dad, never met Mike, because they live in Washington, and the journey here was too much for him by the time I knew Mike.  I think he heard me sing, though.  I think Mom sent them the tape where Mike and I sang Phantom of the Opera in the Talent Show.  So, I think he at least heard us sing . . .

I wear his high school ring, you know.  Grandma brought back a bunch of his stuff with her when she visited after he died.  One of the things was his high school ring, and some other rings.  I claimed his high school one.  It fits perfectly on my middle finger of my left hand.  I find it ironic that my high school ring, I had fitted for the middle finger of my right hand.  Weird, huh?

Well, I’m gonna go.  It’s late, and I need to wake up early tomorrow.  Church cleaning, then Fashion Bug at five.

On a personal note: I hope things went all right at the wake for you, Melanie.  I know how hard those can be, and I was only going to give my condolenses to a friend/neighbor.  I can’t imagine how hard it must have been, being a relative.