You'd think that after almost eight months it wouldn't hurt so much. I'd have gotten over it and moved on. But today, standing outside in the muggy Quebec cemetery beside the beautifully carved black marble headstone, my hair a mass of frizzy red-brown curls and my skin sticky with a sheen of sweat as I hoped that I wouldn't burn again, I realized that that wasn't true. Even after months of this emptiness I wasn't done grieving.
It was reassuring to see that I wasn't the only one amongst the mass of people crowded under the huge tree and around the burial place that felt that way. Not the only one still hurting. I didn't have to be okay because that would come with time.
But as I stared at the open hole where the cremated remains of my grandfather were to be buried in their curling stone container, watching as everyone took their turn to dump a shovel full of dirt into the holes set out for him, and great grandma too, I wasn't sure that I'd ever get over losing him.
It would never be the same again and that wasn't something I could brush off lightly. It would take some getting used to to stop talking about him as if he were still here and acting like nothing had changed. Everything has changed and it hit me as we sat in the packed hall, crammed around a round white table as we munched on our veggies and egg salad sandwiches simply getting reacquainted with cousins we hadn't seen in years or relatives we didn't remember meeting.
He was really gone, forever. And as I watched grandma get on stage and thank everyone for coming today, watch as she choked back years again, I wished for the thousandth time that I could wipe all of her pain away and make it mine to bear instead. Because she, more than any of the rest of us, didn't deserve that kind of pain.
To lose a grandfather is tough, a father even harder but to lose your husband of over 25 years is something that I'm proud of her for trying to overcome. No matter what anyone says, she's the real hero. To me at least. Because she's the one who has to push through the most pain, live with the most memories and figure out what to do with all of the stuff that her compulsive hoarder of a husband left behind.
And it's hard, on all of us, but most of all on the one who had to watch him suffer while we were at school, work or asleep. The one who had to see his pain 24/7 and watch him fade away. And yet she's still going strong, so if she can make it despite the crippling agony that still ripples through her heart all these months later then I can get through this too. And I will. Someday. Somehow. With my family always there to catch me if I fall. Like they always have been and always will be. Together.
YOU ARE READING
With Broken Wings (2013)
Poetry"Take these broken wings and learn to fly again." This is my own personal story of overcoming my demons and my grief. I define my recovery. ι'ℓℓ вє уσυя ѕнσυℓ∂єя тσ cяу ση, уσυя яσcк ωнєη уσυ'яє ησт ѕтяσηg ι'ℓℓ вє уσυя нєαят ωнєη ιт'ѕ вяσкєη, му α...
