Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
My grandmother died last night. This wasn't a shock or a surprise. Her health has been on the decline, and she's been in hospice for the last month. She lived a long life, and in her final days she was surrounded by her three adult children.
My grandma was a kind woman. She wasn't perfect, but I always felt loved in her presence. She was a retired kindergarten teacher, and was still working when I was a kid. I have so many happy memories sitting at her kitchen table, and I'm going to carry those with me for the rest of my life. She was also proof that anyone who claims that you get more conservative as you get older is full of shit, because she certainly didn't.
I think it's interesting how the body processes grief sometimes. I don't know that I'll cry, but over the past month, knowing this was coming, I've felt a tension in my gut. Now that she's passed, instead of relief that tension is replaced by a sense of emptiness. That something is missing that should still be there. Something has been taken away, and I feel it.
Of course, as I wrote that, I immediately started crying... so I guess my body processes grief in pretty ordinary ways too.
I wanted to come up with something profound linking this to Beltane, which we sit in the middle of right now, but it just seemed hackneyed. Like I was trying to dig out some greater significance when the truth is death comes whenever it wants. The only predictable thing about it is that it's the end of all of our journeys. I hope that when I pass I'm so lucky to have lived such a long life with people that I love around me in my final days.
For the record, I will be fine. I just needed to get these words out while they were still in my head. I don't have some rousing conclusion or deep insight to tack on here at the end, just that gut feeling that something is missing.
Because it is.
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I had this terrible feeling they were going to end up stranded on the side of the road. Mind you, we don’t know yet that the gas station is open, but still.
Y’know, I’ve never understood how people end up off the side of the road. I mean, all you have to do is slow down. And if it’s still not safe, you pull off.
Lo and behold though, any time I have to drive in bad weather (especially on the stretch of I65 between Chicago and Lafayette, IN where I live) I see half a dozen cars in the ditch.
What I</ don’t understand is how people end up on the side of the road when the weather isn’t all that bad. Then again, these are probably the same people who are eager to pass me when I’m doing around 55 in a 45 mph zone…
First, I love the action in the last panel.
Second, ending up in the ditch is very very easy. All you have to do is hit a patch while driving too fast. A slick patch, a non-slick patch, a patch of hard snow, a patch of gravel, doesn’t matter. And ‘too fast’ doesn’t always mean fast. 10mph can be too fast in some situations.
After my wife and I bought our current car, when we got the first snowfall of the year I drove out to a local parking lot that hadn’t been plowed yet and purposefully did my best to lose control to see how the car felt and reacted in those conditions. Losing momentary control isn’t the problem — it’s not knowing how to recover.
This is true.