It’s been a while since I’ve written here in this space. My summer was chock full of getting back procedures and gallbladder surgery, being hacked, writing a novel, trying to get my business, Well Worn Words, off the ground, tutoring a little Chinese girl in English, and keeping myself organized with the dozens of doctor appointments, emails with three different legal cases, and volunteering with the Authors’ Club of Augusta that I’m a part of now. When I say keeping organized, what I really mean is that my life looks more like two cats (me and life) scrapping in a frenzied, screeching mess. I sometimes come out on top. But more often, life seems to beat the shit out of me, and my organization and good intentions evaporate in the wind. I constantly feel behind getting all the things I want and need to get done, done.

And then towards the end of the summer, I was forced to slow down and take a step back and reevaluate what was most important in my life.

My Beloved Grandfather

My grandfather, who lives 2 1/2 hours away from me, became very ill with an aggressive T-Cell lymphoma. He was 85 years old and had never suffered from anything like this before. There was a small part of me that honestly believed he would live forever, that he was the timeless Energizer Bunny. I have spent so much of my life visiting him, sharing stories with him, making memories; it was hard imagining a world without Papa in it. He has always supported me , even when he didn’t necessarily understand my problems, and he couldn’t help but make me laugh when no one and nothing else could.

He meant the world to me.

He began feeling bad in April, but he didn’t want to see any visitors, even though he was declining physically very fast. By August, it was apparent he would not survive the cancer, and he finally let his five grandchildren see him, thank goodness. For three weeks, I dropped everything I could and made the trek back and forth from his house. By the fourth week, I knew he was close to the end. My poor uncle had been taking care of Papa all by himself for months and was at the threshold of collapse, so being there for my uncle was also important to me. The last three days I stayed by my grandfather’s bedside and tried to make him as comfortable as I could.

I’ve never been a caretaker before.

I’ve never seen the struggle with death fighting life so close up before.

And I’ve never seen death win.

I’ve never been in a room where someone was once alive a moment ago, and then suddenly are gone like a candle flame snuffed out.

By the time he passed, Papa had lost almost seventy pounds in a matter of months, and he neither looked nor acted like the man I’ve known my whole forty years. And yet I knew the real Papa was still in there, buried amongst organs shutting down, nerves misfiring, and lymph nodes decaying. Papa was very ready to go home to Jesus and to my grandmother who had passed ten years earlier. We told him that it was ok to go on, that Nana was eagerly waiting for him. When he died, instead of immense sadness, I was just so thankful and relieved he was not suffering anymore.

Promises I Couldn’t Keep

I tend to not process things immediately. I require time and reflection to grieve. So, now a month later, I feel like I’m finally grieving my grandpa like he deserved. His passing has affected me deeply.

I couldn’t be there at the end for my dad or my grandmother or two of my good friends who have passed on. So, I promised Papa I would stay until the very end with him. I wouldn’t let him be alone. But on the morning of August 31, after staying up all night with him, I went to the kitchen for 10 minutes to eat something at my uncle’s logical insistence that I needed to take care of myself a little.

And Papa slipped away right in those few moments I was gone.

I felt so terribly guilty – I had unwittingly broken my promise to him, but even worse, he was all alone in his last moments. It nearly undid me. I really was unkind to myself until I heard over and over from my therapists and family and strangers that people’s loved ones so often have done just the same thing. Hospice even talks about it in their manual on death and dying (which is what I call it). It’s almost like the dying person holds on until their loved one leaves for just a moment, and then they go away softly into that dark night. Like they’re trying to subconsciously protect us from death, and it’s messy removal of their soul from the earth.

Frankly, I’m still pissed at death for doing that, but I hope the story is true.

Papa didn’t want anything special at his funeral. He wanted it to be quick and simple, without a fuss. All he asked for was that each grandkid be allowed to speak for five minutes and for a couple of songs to be sung. Papa had been my hero in more ways than one, and I mostly just told stories (if you are interested, you can read the eulogy here).

My cousin Heidi wrote an obituary that was just as hilarious as Papa was (which you can find here), and my cousin, Jake, shared this powerful poem:

“Death is Nothing at All” by Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

I know all of us were honored to share our great love and respect for Papa at the funeral. We also got to be pallbearers, even though four of us are women, and that was special in its own way too.

The Aftermath

It’s been rough coming to grips with Papa being gone. I keep dreaming that his ghost is visiting and trying to tell me something important, probably another one of his many pieces of advice. Or I dream about his corpse stalking me, and that is, of course, disturbing. I’m not sure what it means. I keep on wanting to pick up the phone and call him to hear his voice, but I just have to keep listening to a birthday message he left on my voicemail instead. I see a picture of him on the refrigerator with both of us being goofy, and it feels like a punch to my gut. I have since developed radial tunnel syndrome in both my arms, apparently from lifting him and changing him in his last days. Both of my arms are painful and weak and braced up….for a while there I couldn’t type or text or even hold a coffee mug. But I absolutely wouldn’t trade a second that I had with Papa, and I would have done it all over again, arms included.

Small parts of me blame myself for not calling more often and not visiting more often when Papa was alive. But even if I had lived with him 24/7, it wouldn’t have been enough time. There is never enough time with those you love deeply. I’m trying to show myself grace. I am not a stranger to grief and loss, and finally I feel like I can handle the overwhelming sadness in healthier ways than I used to. But it’s still hard.

For about 6 weeks there, it was impossible for me to go to all my doctor appointments and write in my novel and get all the many things done that I place on myself to do. But when I weighed “getting things done,” even as driven as I am, with loving Papa and spending his last days with him, I chose him. And I’m so grateful that I did that. I made a good choice there, and I won’t have any regrets.

Now, I am feeling stressed again, being “so behind.” But when I think of Papa, I think of how content he was living life simply. He didn’t go, go, go. He didn’t measure time in what he accomplished or how much he did. He simply WAS. When you compare the two of us, I tend to be a human doing, while he was a human being (of the very best sort). If only I (and all you other Type A, obsessive go-getters) could be more like Papa. We’d be a lot happier for sure.

Grief is Complicated

This time of year is extra difficult for me because I am grieving other things too. A lost marriage. The many memories I had with my ex in the fall because everything happened in the fall. My ability to work and actually get paid a wage. Being hurt in Africa. Leaving my home up in the DMV. All the seasonal dance shows and performances I used to do in the fall. I still miss my kitties. Even the weather down here makes me grieve because I miss the North, which sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.

It’s a lot. I have survived all of it. And I am so much better mentally and emotionally than I used to be, and I recognize that there is much to be thankful for. Because of this, I am trying to create a 5-6 week course on grief and loss, which I will hopefully have available in a couple of weeks because I know I am definitely not the only one who has lost a loved one or feels grief during this season. I’m going to share all the things I’ve learned through my therapists, reading, and life experiences. I’m hoping, too, it will be a time where others can share their grief in a safe environment, explore ways to celebrate their lost loved ones, and feel comforted by the fact that they are not alone. Stay tuned!

Before I end, I just want to encourage you to take a look at this worksheet from psychologist J. William Wordon and this worksheet from SimplePractice if you are grieving too. They have been helpful for me!

Keep on keeping on, Friends!