tonight, i have no title...

i thought i was done with all that depth-y stuff. tonight, i was planning to post a post like this: so, i was recently turned on to mcdonald's iced coffee and... or one like this: so, my sister and i got into another drunken brawl and... or even one like this: top ten reasons why i despise june bugs. 1...

but, you see, my grandpa died.

now we have never been particularly close. i have mostly fond memories of him from when i was little and good ones from when i was older but, like i said, we were never too close. it feels like a great uncle or someone dying. i mean, you feel sad but, for the most part, it doesn't hit too close to home. this is similar to that for me except the people most effected by this are some of the ones i hold closest to me and i just can't stop thinking about how they must feel--and in doing so, i'm once again faced with the reality that death is imminent and the one and only thing i will never be successful at talking my way out of.

i think that when i think of my mom, her sister's and my grandma, it hurts the biggest...my mom has brother's too, but being a female, with my own dad, i empathize with them the strongest.

my grandparents have been divorced all of my life, so my grandma is used to living on her own--but he was still the father of her kids; they dated, and married, and made a home, and produced a family together. now my grandma stands alone in front of her army, her second in command gone forever. i keep wondering how that might feel. i am in my years where she was with him and these are wonderful years for me. i will look back at them some day and i will miss them either way...but to have the person i shared them intimately with, dead...i would feel so alone, i think. good times or bad times, they were times of my life. maybe she's looking at death now and maybe it feels more real than ever.

and then there's my own mom. she had been so dutiful to my grandpa for years now. they were not always close and he wasn't always grateful for her, but she never left his side despite the toll it has taken on her personally. she went from a few years ago moving him from home to home, spending hours making him individually packaged, home-cooked meals he could freeze for later and doing all of his errand running to sitting with him for hours and reading him the newspaper, staying for even more hours, at his side and feeding him when he was too weak to do it himself--and those examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what she has done. she gave up her job, her social time and her life in general to be there for him. she rolls her eyes with her voice when i've mentioned this, but i see her as a saint. i really do. i keep thinking of how she must be feeling. she has cried about this, been stressed at times and felt so alone with it all. we're not always the closest to each other, as of late, but i still think about her a daily basis. i try to imagine what she must think, how she might feel...maybe there's a sense of relief, hell, there would have to be i think, but there must be a general feeling of, "now what?" too. and then the loneliness of losing a parent, someone who raised you, someone you have built the last few years of your life around...my dad said that after losing both of his parents he felt quite orphaned in the world, even as an adult. so i think of all of that too. i think of losing my own dad...and that's when i cry. it's so self-centered that that's what makes me cry the hardest, but it's the only way i know how to empathize. i think about being a grandma, losing my friends one by one, and i cry; i think about my daughter caring for me someday and i cry as well, but i think, i think of my mom the most. i am so proud of her strength and i pray it's in me too...i look up at her as i did before we ever saw eye to eye. i think that strength must be in me considering that i am her daughter; but, at this point, i can only hope due to, like i said, only being able to think about things; assuming i could be half of her is selfishly presumptuous. i don't know what she's going through; i can only imagine.

then there's her sister's. one of them is on a train right now. she was coming here to help my mom care for him because my mom was just so tired. she had expected to see him for one last father's day and now, on her travels, she knows that she is too late. i wonder if she questions if she would have left earlier had things been different or if, with her faith, if she's secure in knowing that was simply his time. her other sister is so far away and so lonely. i'm not sure she will come here due to fears she has, but then i think about her alone. there is loneliness in death and there is loneliness in life and she is facing them both, alone. and then all of them are dealing with a media barrage of father's day reminders for, 'getting dad the perfect gift'...maybe it feels like salt in a wound, maybe not.

i feel so useless in my thoughts. thoughts don't help anyone, but i know i can't make things better either. so i write, and i toss around thoughts of death, and of life, and i find some sort of solace in that i suppose. i toss the thoughts around sober, and i toss them around stoned, and occasionally i toss them around while drunk. i'm always trying to figure it all out...as if an altered state of mind might be the key to unlocking it all (it's not)...i've been trying to figure it all out since i was five. i try to just be thankful for my age, my health, my situation in this life and those things help me feel better. not in an, 'i'm better than you sort of way' but in an, 'i need to not forget to be thankful' sort of way.


10:40 pm...(i'm finally back to my computer after a night on the phone and two glasses of wine.)

i'm very sorry if i've offended anyone tonight...family mostly...but i'm just hitting 'publish post' before scrutinizing my post like normal. i'm just not in the mood. sometimes you get me raw and a bit unedited...before the 'oooh, that sounds bad' thoughts kick in and i start deleting and heavily editing. despite what anyone may believe, i have never talked 'flowery, sugar-coated bullshit'...and if i have, it's what i truly believe. i'm quite hippy-ish and that whole buddhist non-attachment/forgiveness/non-judgment thing speaks loudly to me. if you think about what i believe i do make sense and i'm not crazy. maybe tomorrow i will write of the drunken brawl with my sister...it was a doozy this time... for now though, i am going to finish this glass of wine and then pour another. i am going to wander off to bed, i think i'll shower in the morning, and i'm going to turn on a movie--something funny most likely...and i'm going to use that movie to clear my mind from the past/present/future cluster-f*ck of a mess it's stuck in and then i'm going to sleep.