Thoughts of a stargazer

Heat

🎵// It's a kind of magic. QUEEN \\

It was sweltering hot even in the shade. It was a dry heat, but even under the patio outside there was no breeze, making it stuffy. Even in my large backyard I felt suffocated more so than in my room which at least had the fan on creating a simulation of being outside in the cool air. But none the less I stayed swinging in my chair out the back, both my pale legs propped up on the garden bed beside me listening to music as I laid my head back basking in the uncomfortably warm weather.

Its been three weeks and 2 days since she'd died and I still hadn't cried. Most of the people who knew thought it was unhealthy, hell, even I thought it was strange. The one person in my life who had stayed. Like a rock, no matter how hard the current, she stayed in the river that was my life and then unexpectedly just crumbled to nothing, letting in the pressure she had been holding back.

I'd thought after my rock had crumbled all that water would have come rushing out of my eyes, but after the one painful heat wrenching sob I had let out the moment she'd stopped breathing it'd seemed the river had dried up, someone had turned off the tap and I'd just sat there holding her now cold hand.  Three weeks now and I still hadn't cried over my grandmothers passing.

At first I thought it was because it just hadn't registered, after all, I had sat there as her heart stopped, held her hand and continued to sit beside with her for another 4 hours after until the funeral home came to take her body. Even others had left after crying and accepting she had passed but I couldn't leave. I had to be there every step of the way to make sure what was happening was real. I'd stayed beside her and watched as her face slowly started to sink and yellow, as her hands started to swell and even when they came to wrap her body I'd stayed and watched them flip her lifeless body over to wrap her in the sheets she had been lying in. I walked with her through the hallways and out of the glass doors. Not a single tear.

But after a week I still hadn't shed a tear, so I thought maybe I'd be holding until her funeral, I'd be the only family member speaking, my uncles, aunts and cousins unable to form words on their own. This was the moment I thought to myself as I stood up to deliver my eulogy. But again I'd gotten through it perfectly fine, barely even a voice crack, and as I drove to her wake after waiting for the tears, none had come.

After that I'd just decided it to be shock that was stopping me from what I thought was healthy grieving, of course I felt sad, but every time I felt tears start to brim my eyes it felt too forced and I'd blink them away, like I didn't have to right to cry anymore. So I'd come to the conclusion I'd grieve in my own way.

And that's how I found myself basking in the hot air in just my underthings, coated in a thin layer of sweat. Just like my Nanna had done throughout her life, sitting in the sun soaking it up and giving herself a tan.

Countless times during my childhood I had come out of the house and seen her lying naked in the pool floating on her back in the sun, or bathing on a towel on the grass covered in coconut oil. Countless time I had joined her, creating a scene that reminded me of her, of comfort and allowing me to grow and tend to my self acceptance without even knowing it. It was the time I felt the closest to her, even more so if I did it at the beach, so instead of crying through my tear ducts I'd decided to cry through my skin as I sweated out all the anxieties from the week.