unravelling

first, thank you all for your words of support and concern. it really does mean a lot to me. up until now i have pretty much held my shit together.

i KNOW all of the good things--that she's at peace, she's with my paw-paw and she didn't have to linger. my head knows all of that. i even went to work yesterday, hours after hearing she died. i was strong. i was ok. but not so much today.

yes, i miss her, the person, but it feels like so much more than that. i cannot lie and say i was closer to her than i actually was. i was closer to my paw-paw, her husband, who died when i was in high school. i was closer to my maternal grandma, who died the year my son was born. and, while i still have my other grandpa i was never that close to him and haven't seen or talked to him in ages. so, with maw-maw dying i feel like the fabric of my childhood, the last connection i had to that and to my paw-paw are also gone. it makes me feel the loss of them all over again. the loss of being with them.

even before she got older, she always repeated the same stories over and over again. after years of hearing them i'd groan inside each time she started to tell a story. and now i'll never hear them again. i won't hear the story about how, when i was maybe two she and my paw-paw took me out to buy a coat and it was taking longer than i wanted it to so i threw a fit. or the time my paw-paw was working on the stove in the kitchen and i was bugging him so he told me to go out and play in the backyard. i told him, no paw-paw i can't because ears (their basset hound) is out there and there's poop in the yard. or how one day when i was home from college for the weekend and we sat in her bedroom floor until it got dark and shadows crossed the room, looking at all of her pictures. or how another weekend when i was in college we took a road trip through west virginia, just the two of us, driving wherever, stopping and seeing different sights. i had just gotten my license and she let me drive, on the highway, while she smoked like a freight train (i didn't smoke then) undaunted by my new-found driving skills. when i was in high school i had to write a paper on picasso for art class. this was back before computers and email and the technology then was a typewriter. i must have mentioned this project to her either in a letter or on the phone so she sent me her college theme paper on picasso. i still have it somewhere. i still have the winnie-the-pooh sleeping bag she and my grandpa gave me when i was five. the smell of joy dish soap still takes me back to her kitchen, her standing there in all of her 4'5" glory washing dishes or sitting at the table doing a crossword puzzle.

so, i wrote the eulogy. i think, if he's able, my brother is going to read it. i know i can't.