Tag Archives: sadness

Death, Donuts, And A Cigarette In The Morning

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I kept a journal over the past week, to help process my thoughts. It’s not the most uplifting, but, it’s life.

8.4.11 {Donuts.}

I’m writing this while at the hospital, laying on the bed across from my grandpa. He’s been gasping for breath and finally admits that the smoking got the best of him – not that this foreshadowing would have changed anything. “There’s just nothing like coffee and a cigarette in the morning,” he always said.

He’s been around since I was born, although he’s not my dad’s biological father. When I was young, I didn’t know what a bitter and broken man he was. I didn’t know that he stormed Normandy Beach and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, only surviving because his friend’s bodies shielded him. Nor did I know that he had two children in the cemetery, and his only surviving son (Larry) was born prematurely, which resulted in visual and mental impairments. And I did not know that his first wife died of a sudden illness when Larry was only 25. All I knew back then was that he had an awesome underground pool, liked to drink “highballs” and made me cry when he dressed up as Santa.

Santa always did scare the crap out of me.

He was generally nice to me, albeit a bit cranky and argumentative. But as I grew, it became apparent that he never accepted my father or our family. I saw how controlling he was of my sweet and wonderful grandma. How he caused our family to fall apart. How my father had to tolerate years of awful mistreatment just to see his own mother. In latter days, bitterness caused me to detach, which carried along the tragic side effect of lost time spent with my grandma while she still had her memory.

So I’m sad today, but not for obvious reasons. I’m sad for my uncle Larry, who has no family of his own and whose mother died when he was young. I’m sad for him because now he’s losing his caregiver and father; and his stepmother (my grandma) has Alzheimer’s. I’m sad because he’s been sitting by his dad’s bedside for a week, without barely sleeping or eating, just waiting for him to open his eyes. I’m sad because I know that he envisions himself in that bed someday and he wonders if anyone will be sitting by his side. And I’m sad because I realize that I’ll have to go through this with my own parents someday and that thought is incomprehensible to me.

I don’t know what to say. I can’t hold it together when I see the tears welling up in someone’s eyes. I leave for a while to regain my composure and to buy some sprinkle donuts and Excedrin for Larry. And a few hundred purses for myself.

Larry turns to me and says, “If dad were awake he would yell at me to change my shirt because it has stains on it… I wish he would wake up and yell at me.” My dad shows up with a stack of To Do lists, tired and stressed, although no one could possibly tell except me. I force him to sit down and eat something. He’s always taking care of everything but himself. Just like any five year-old would, he jumps on the wheelchair scale and starts weighing himself, in attempt to distract Larry for a second. It works.

8.5.11 {Death.}

Grandpa dies. My dad and cousin are digging through files and making funeral arrangements at my grandma’s apartment. I see the heaviness in my dad’s eyes as he contemplates how to tell his mother the news and having to move her into a home. I try to distract grandma by looking through picture albums with her. Larry is in the bedroom crying and we hope she doesn’t notice. As I flip through pages, I start removing pictures of my grandpa to use for the memorial posters at his funeral. My grandma repeatedly asks what I’m doing and I tell her that I’m making a special project for her.

8.6.11 {Five poster boards.}

As I sort through eleven boxes of pictures, I attempt to summarize my grandpa’s life in five poster boards. Five, because that’s how many easels the funeral home gives you. How do I possibly divide up a person’s life like that? I look at the growing stack of pictures I’m not going to use and I realize that in the end, pictures of trips and toys and new wallpaper don’t matter. They all get thrown away. No one is going to pass those down. They won’t be displayed at your funeral. I cry for the first time as I glue his life together, picture by picture, and I think about what he did and didn’t mean to me. Then I turn off Damien Rice because he’s not helping any.

My dad stops by to bring me lunch because – he’s concerned about my stress level. He says when the pastor asked him for stories for the funeral,  he couldn’t think of one good memory. He admits that it is hard for him to listen to everyone gush about how great his step dad was. Of course, my dad is too much of a man to ever let them think otherwise.

 8.8.11 {The funeral.}

The morning of the funeral, my grandma has to be told all over again that her husband is gone. The funeral is about to start and she is the last to arrive. My dad finally walks in, holding her arm with tears in his eyes as he sees how broken up and scared she is. I have to look away.

I sit right behind them in the second row and all I can focus on are her silent sobs as her shoulders shake with overwhelming sadness. Larry’s frequent outbursts are heartbreaking and I try to stare at the ground. Later on, my grandma keeps saying that she isn’t able to take care of herself and she doesn’t know how to live without her husband. We assure her that we’ll be taking care of her and hope to God she forgets all of this by tomorrow.

I feel sad and relieved and guilty and bitter. My grandpa was a great war hero. He was a wonderful father to Larry. And growing up, we did have some good times at the pool. Our Christmases were always a blast, until we stopped having them. He made my grandma happy, for the most part. He had a lot of sadness in his life and I do cut him some slack for that.

I don’t know. But those are the things I’ll try to remember about him.

Wondering where I went? I have returned to blogging over at my whole foods blog Celery and the City, where we live so clean it’s like your insides took a bath.

Or Is She A Light Sleeper Too?

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When I was young, I would lay barefoot in my dad’s old canoe, with my friend Christian, and daydream. I dreamt of snow days, tree forts, and perhaps a car to wander down my lonely dead end street so I could sell them cranberry juice or a stolen pumpkin from the neighbor’s garden. My mom always said lemonade was nothing but sugar and wasn’t good for my bladder like cranberry juice. My response was that I was just trying to make a buck (literally) and no one had ever heard of a cranberry juice stand.

A few years later, I got blonde highlights, a training bra, and started dreaming of my first kiss or how great it would feel to be able to drive myself to the mall. And snow days. During my early college years, I dreamt of moving to the city, sipping martinis in cute cocktail dresses, meeting an affluent man who wore skinny ties, and becoming a writer for some sort of BS magazine, like say, Cosmo or Allure. That was just a phase, thank God. At that point in my life, friends were ever-changing, as were boyfriends and the color of my bridesmaid dresses, yet I still had no dreams of my own white wedding.

By the grace of God, I turned down a proposal that would have surely ended in a nasty divorce, a black eye, and several restraining orders. Toward the end of college, while filling lumber orders at Home Depot, I would stare at my Italy calendar and dream of exploring this beautiful world of ours. So I did. The trip came with an added bonus: a charming, British boy who moved to my crappy town and bought me a house on a street lined with maple trees. I loved him incredibly.

sad-faceAt this point, I had experienced enough of life not to get my hopes up. However, one sunny fall day as I was driving through the neighborhood, I saw a father helping his son learn how to ride a bike. I remember watching them and thinking that for the first time in my life, I am not scared. I felt happy. I felt relieved that maybe I was finally ready for my “real life” to begin. When I opened the front door, I found my boyfriend unconscious from a heroin overdose. For the following three years, the only dream that existed in me was that I would awake to find him, still breathing.

In my mid-twenties, I assembled the disjointed pieces of myself and started figuring out who I was. Tried many things, failed. I discovered new passions, such as photography. I developed old passions, such as writing. I dreamt of independence. I dreamt of making my living as a writer. I dreamt of finding a man who truly got me, if he even existed. Someone I could laugh with. I didn’t care about his wealth, or status, or how well he could coordinate his own outfits.

As I am now dangerously approaching a middle-age milestone, I look back and realize my dreams have always been rather simple. Many people dream of curing cancer, being famously known, or owning a penthouse suite in Times Square. The dream of a fairy tale wedding never even existed for me, and the dream of watching my son learn how to ride his bike on the sidewalk has long since been shelved to collect dust, along with several others.

I haven’t expected much out of life, or the people I encounter in it – just common decency. I’ve made terrible mistakes, but I’ve learned. I’ve learned how to distinguish friends that actually give a damn; you really are the company you keep. I’ve learned that you might fall for someone’s personality, but unfortunately, must live with their character. I’ve learned that there is no better feeling than a clear conscience; nothing worse than a guilty one. I’ve learned that in every situation, you have a choice. I’ve learned that sometimes it’s okay, even necessary, to be alone. I’ve learned that I’d still rather be hurt, than hurt someone else. I’ve learned that coping mechanisms are cowardice; and only for those not willing to surrender to the pain, which ultimately enables you to better yourself. I’ve learned that grace and dignity during difficult situations are the difference between a girl and a woman, a boy and a man. I’ve learned the high road, although much less traveled, takes you much farther. I’ve learned that you should always call someone’s bluff. I’ve learned that words, although the source of my survival, are also the bane of my existence, because they mean nothing.

feet-in-grass2Yesterday, it was sunset. As I was driving through a tree-lined neighborhood, I looked at all the families. I gawked at the couples, with their hands in each other’s back pockets. Perhaps they were truly happy; perhaps they lived in Ignorant Bliss, where I have been until recently.

And it seemed, in that moment, everything had come full circle. The only thing I really wanted to do was lay barefoot in the grass, rest my puffy eyes, and daydream with someone. Someone I could laugh with. Someone who truly got me.

“Our happiness, such as in its degree it has been, lives in memory. We have not the voice itself; we have only its echo. We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once. After all, a man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else he is rich, in nothing else he is poor.” -Alexander Smith