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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*cries*
I posted this on the Facebook page for UnCONventional, but I figured I’d put it here too:
This particular comic is the moment that inspired this entire storyline. I was sitting down thinking about how I hadn’t done a serious story in years, and the idea “What if Megan’s Dad Died?” popped into my head. Just the thought of losing someone you loved deeply while you were at war with each other. How do you process that loss when you know you can never resolve things? I thought about Megan sitting up in the middle of the night unable to sleep thinking about what had happened.
And then I cried.
And then I thought “Holy shit, I need to make everyone else cry!” because part of me is a terrible, terrible person.
I mostly cried because I my mom died when we weren’t on the best of terms. But at least her last words to me was “Happy birthday.” Today was the anniversary of her death, so it hit extra hard. @_@
Holy cow, I’m so sorry to hear that.
wow….it reminds me of my dad. He alienated all of my sisters and I was the only one who kept in real touch with him. When he died ( he was a WW2 and Korea vet ), My wife, daughter and I were the only family members at his funeral. None of my sisters were there and 2 of them considered him to be dead to them. My middle sister later on was the only one who actually saw what he was suffering from and that took her son coming home from Afghanistan with a bad case of PTSD, the same thing that had alienated my sisters from my father so many years ago.
Yes. yes, you are a terrible person for that, Trae!