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inevitable
Dec. 2nd, 2003 12:32 amOne of my friends from the wired wrote a very moving and eloquent post on her father's recent death. She found him, and I can't get that image out of my head. Probably because it makes me think about my father, who has and continues to be ill. I think I should call him. I think I should make more of an effort with him, because you only get so many chances in this life. It is so hard and so easy.
While I am enormously grateful for Alan's family and that so much of my blood and extended kin will be here in two weeks, there is one missing and that loss hasn't stopped hurting in nearly six years. My grandfather died the night before I started my first semester at UT. I walked around my first day in a daze, and called my mom hysterical the next morning. She put me on a plane to Amarillo because I couldn't face a supposedly normal life just then. There was champagne on the flight because it was a brand new jet for Southwest airlines and it did indeed have more leg room. The stewardess let me have two glasses and I wore sunglasses. I hadn't been in the Amarillo airport since I was a small child.
The last time I talked to him was a couple weeks previous, at Christmas. I remember his voice sounding a little slurred, not as robust as usual. But he was as sweet and funny as he had been my entire life. The last thing I said to him was "I love you." He was dying, at home because he hated the hospital and he knew it was coming. I had a muffled, convulsive fit in the bathroom of my grandparents' home when I found out I had been sleeping in the bed where he died. I didn't know they moved him to make it easier for the nurse that visited every day.
I remember the church service, and how I didn't have appropriately black clothes except for one silk shirt. Thank God, there was no casket because I am certain I could not have dealt with that at all. I remember the drive out into the Panhandle plains, to a tiny cemetary where most of the family is buried. It's where my father will go, I'm sure. It was cold, and bright, and the sky is huge out there on the caprock. It goes on forever and all I had of my grandfather was a little sealed box of ashes. My aunt laid her hand on it, and my grandmother turned to her. "Dana, he's not there," she said.
At the house I ate myself sick on that marshmallow and fruit salad people always make. I slept on the sofa in the formal living room where my grandmother played bridge. My father and I drove home, and he let me drive his truck 90mph down the interstate for hours. We stopped at a Burger King, I think.
I miss my grandfather. The man I knew was kind, and funny. He was not the man my father knew, and they only reconciled very shortly before the cancer came back to take his life. It was my birth that changed my grandfather, I am told. He taught me to fish and to skip stones, though mostly we threw rocks to hear the sound. He taught me to play gin and count to eleven in Spanish. He would spend hours looking at Bassmaster catalogs and playing this game with me where we picked out our favorite fishing lures and boats from each page. He let me eat a lot of ice cream. He loved me, without reservation.
The grief is still raw and hollow for me, and I don't know if I'll ever find a way to smooth it down. It fucking wrecks me that he isn't here to see who I am now, to see that I stopped being such a foolish and destructive teenager, to see that I did learn languages and fly to other countries and have a responsible credit rating. It hurts me to know he isn't here to shake Alan's hand, to eat with us and tell jokes. I think he would have gotten on so well with Alan. They would have talked about cars and guns and told each other bad jokes.
I miss you so much.
While I am enormously grateful for Alan's family and that so much of my blood and extended kin will be here in two weeks, there is one missing and that loss hasn't stopped hurting in nearly six years. My grandfather died the night before I started my first semester at UT. I walked around my first day in a daze, and called my mom hysterical the next morning. She put me on a plane to Amarillo because I couldn't face a supposedly normal life just then. There was champagne on the flight because it was a brand new jet for Southwest airlines and it did indeed have more leg room. The stewardess let me have two glasses and I wore sunglasses. I hadn't been in the Amarillo airport since I was a small child.
The last time I talked to him was a couple weeks previous, at Christmas. I remember his voice sounding a little slurred, not as robust as usual. But he was as sweet and funny as he had been my entire life. The last thing I said to him was "I love you." He was dying, at home because he hated the hospital and he knew it was coming. I had a muffled, convulsive fit in the bathroom of my grandparents' home when I found out I had been sleeping in the bed where he died. I didn't know they moved him to make it easier for the nurse that visited every day.
I remember the church service, and how I didn't have appropriately black clothes except for one silk shirt. Thank God, there was no casket because I am certain I could not have dealt with that at all. I remember the drive out into the Panhandle plains, to a tiny cemetary where most of the family is buried. It's where my father will go, I'm sure. It was cold, and bright, and the sky is huge out there on the caprock. It goes on forever and all I had of my grandfather was a little sealed box of ashes. My aunt laid her hand on it, and my grandmother turned to her. "Dana, he's not there," she said.
At the house I ate myself sick on that marshmallow and fruit salad people always make. I slept on the sofa in the formal living room where my grandmother played bridge. My father and I drove home, and he let me drive his truck 90mph down the interstate for hours. We stopped at a Burger King, I think.
I miss my grandfather. The man I knew was kind, and funny. He was not the man my father knew, and they only reconciled very shortly before the cancer came back to take his life. It was my birth that changed my grandfather, I am told. He taught me to fish and to skip stones, though mostly we threw rocks to hear the sound. He taught me to play gin and count to eleven in Spanish. He would spend hours looking at Bassmaster catalogs and playing this game with me where we picked out our favorite fishing lures and boats from each page. He let me eat a lot of ice cream. He loved me, without reservation.
The grief is still raw and hollow for me, and I don't know if I'll ever find a way to smooth it down. It fucking wrecks me that he isn't here to see who I am now, to see that I stopped being such a foolish and destructive teenager, to see that I did learn languages and fly to other countries and have a responsible credit rating. It hurts me to know he isn't here to shake Alan's hand, to eat with us and tell jokes. I think he would have gotten on so well with Alan. They would have talked about cars and guns and told each other bad jokes.
I miss you so much.