Goodnight

How to start?

I miss you. I didn't know my heart could hurt this much. Where are you? Could I have done anything? Did you want me to let them give you the medicine?

You had said chemical intervention was ok, did I make the wrong call?

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

I sang to you as you died. I sang the songs you used to sing to me when I was little. I held your hand and sang and sobbed and watched the monitors as you slipped away...as you fought.

The CAT scan wasn't good, Grandma, I was alone and scared and I tried to do what was right by what you'd told me.

They intubated you, I wasn't there to stop them. If I had been they wouldn't have been able to revive you the first time. It didn't seem right somehow that they had.

I didn't want you to go through a second time, Mom didn't want to put you through that either.

I saw you on Wednesday, I knew you weren't feeling well. I should have done something, I should have called doctors and yelled at them. I should have done something, but I didn't think about it at the time.

I was thinking about you being sick and my kids being there, I didn't want to catch anything. I can't tell you how grateful I am that he insisted on hugging you and kissing your cheek. I can picture that moment with perfect clarity.

There are so many memories. From when I was tiny to you holding my babies to standing hugging my babies tightly while we cried over your body in the open casket. It didn't look like you. We were all grateful for that. It just emphasized that that wasn't you laying there.

I didn't come to your cremation, but you know that. I don't know if it was you or God, but the sense of peace I woke with a half hour before my alarm with the deep knowledge I didn't need to be there...thank you. It stayed with me for two days. Two days of feeling the freedom and joy you have now before slowly over the next two days descending back into my reality where I can't call you anymore. Where you are and aren't all at once. Where I can't let your dirty clothes leave my side when I'm in my office because they smell like you. Where the statue I've always thought of as God sits next to my monitor watching over me as I sit here and drink margaritas and cry as I type.

I miss you, Grandma, more than I knew was possible. I ache way deep down where there's a part of me that isn't on this plane anymore.

My head hurts from crying again. I know this isn't what you want for me, but I can't help it. We were woven together you and I and now you're not here. You've moved on and left me behind. Some part of me is so grateful that you'll never hurt again, that the pain of your life the pain of your body is gone and all that's left is the pure you. But I was very attached to the voice that body carried, the look in your eyes when you laughed, the smell of your perfume...the smell of your hair, how your nails were nearly always perfect, to how it felt to have you kiss my cheek as I kissed yours while we hugged. It was in those tiny instants that we both knew each other for the unblemished being we carry within, for the God in each other.

I hugged your body and buried my face in your hair many times after I helped them disconnect you from all the machines and tubes. I can remember what that felt like, I can close my eyes and remember hugging my Grammie, the scent of your hair was new but beautiful as always, you skin was so cold but it was as soft as it has always been.

It didn't take long after I asked them to take the breathing tube out for your lips to go blue, then purple, then a deep reddish purple. Almost as though you had lipstick on.

In the time I was alone with you after your heart stopped I kept having these moment of feeling like such a small child. I felt alone and scared and I tried to wake you. I know it was unreasonable, but somehow I'm glad I tried. I know that if I couldn't wake you no one could.

It still doesn't feel real, ya know. It doesn't feel like I can't pick up the phone and call you, or drive 20 minutes and see you. It doesn't feel real except I'm surrounded by your things that you'd never have parted with....except that Mom and I have had hushed somber conversations about who gets what...except that I can't ever hug you again and you aren't here to give me list after list of things to do.

I miss you...I miss the lists...I miss everything.

Until we meet in God's hands.

-me