keep walking

Grief is a strange thing.

I feel like I have spent most of the last eleven days in a fog. Like it's a bad dream and one of these times that the phone rings, it'll be Mom and she'll say that there's been a mistake.

But when the phone does ring, it is Mom, but she's just checking to see how I'm coping.

With the death of my Grandmother.

What is this, some kind of joke?

This new normal- you know, the one where both of my grandparents are dead- isn't one that I have welcomed with open arms, I'll tell you.

And I even got upset with someone for something that hadn't really occurred to me before.

Here's what I have experienced. When there were people who heard about the death of my Grandmother, they would ask me how old she was.

When I tell them that she was within thirty days of celebrating her 90th birthday, their reaction, without words, is- "well, I'm sure she lived a good long life."

That makes it okay that she died? Not with me, it doesn't.

Just because she was nearly 90 does not make it any easier to accept her death. I wasn't ready last week and I wouldn't have been ready if she had lived another ten years.

I just wasn't ready.

So, now I cope. Not because I want to. Because I have to. What I really want to do is to climb in bed and cover my head and not come out till the ache in my heart goes away.

But the boys have needs to be met. And dinner, such as it is, is needing to be cooked. And Jon still wants to go on our Saturday morning breakfast date.

Staying in bed wouldn't change a thing. That's what someone who shall remain nameless told me. And when I told Mom, she said that while that is true, if staying in bed would make me feel better, I could. But just for that day.

Because Grandma wouldn't want me to be so overcome that I couldn't cope at all.

But right now, that's where I am. Or that's what it feels like.

Jon has been so understanding. And he really can only empathize, since he lived oceans and countries away from any of his grandparents. But he's been great.

I'm sad for him too; never knowing what it's like to have or love or lose a grandma. He didn't even realize what he missed out on until last week, really. So, he's doing his own grieving, really; of what I'm missing and what he's missed.

Every minute I find myself not crying feels like moving forward. And then in the next minute or even the one after that, I'm overwhelmed by sadness and tears and it feels as though I can never get off the merry-go-round from hell.

But for now, I guess any movement is progress.