I wish heaven had visiting hours like hospitals do.
Strangers and friends kept assuring me, “he’s in a better place”, but I couldn’t come to grips with the fact that here, with me, with us, wasn’t good enough.
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The walls were white, and the room was well lit, but not blindingly so. Stripes covered the bottom halves of the walls. Everything about the spacious room screamed floral: the sickeningly sweet smell, the colors, the fake flowers crammed into vases, the arrangements of flowers that were orderly scattered about the room, the water that filled the gigantic bottle with cups beside it. Even the Kleenex boxes had flower designs on them.
Then there was the metal casket.
It was open, just for us; my grandfather had been self conscious about his wilting body: the bruises from the needle sticks, the blotches of discoloration from the chemo treatments, the wrinkles of age.
I’d had to convince my sister to come to the visitation, because she was squeamish about the body.
Of all the things to freak out about, and she freaks out about the body.
Even an eight year old was braving the open casket with little hesitation.
I don’t know how my sister could think about the creepiness of the dead body while there was a man that was missing and would never come back.
Ever.
It was his shell.
He was a good man.
The shell was empty.
What was there to be afraid of?
I’d worn a purple shirt, blue jeans, and a gold cross necklace.
When we met up with the rest of the family outside of the funeral home, everyone was filled with a melancholy energy.
We’d entered the building; the men in suits were soft spoken and understanding. They weren’t intimidating in any way.
The doors to the rooms were so well oiled, you wouldn’t even be able to tell when they opened or closed had it not been for the latches on the doors.
I knew I needed to not only see my grandfather to come to the realization that he was never coming back, I needed to touch him, too.
We entered the room, the door latched, and nothing happened.
Silence.
No one dared to breathe the air of a dead man’s body. They were too afraid they might catch a disease from the deceased.
Stillness.
The dust motes weren’t even moving.
After what seemed like hours, his brother, his brother’s wife, and their daughter went up to see him.
Eventually we got our turn.
I went up and hesitantly asked my father if I could touch the shell in the casket.
He nodded and whispered words of affirmation.
I felt like a child again.
A child trapped in a seventeen year old’s body.
Tears began to make rivers down my cheeks as I reached out and touched his larger-than-life hand. The flesh wasn’t as cold as I’d anticipated.
He’d been a butcher since he was seventeen years old.
He was the gentlest, but largest man I’ve ever known.
He was gone.
And he was never coming back.
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I was eight years old when my great-grandmother died; I was within fifty feet of her as she exhaled her last breath. Sure, I’d cried, and I’d been sad, but I was too young to fully grasp what had actually occurred. A human, a person, just like you or me, had ceased to exist on this earth.
I just couldn’t wrap my little brain around it.
My grandfather died on October 19th, 2014; I crossed a threshold from which I can never come back.
I wish I could’ve kept my childhood innocence forever.
But this… this is all part of growing up.
I remember details surrounding his death, with sharpness, something that psychologists like to call flashbulb memories. I remember the hospital puzzles (always missing several pieces, but beautiful regardless), the visitors (strangers with warm handshakes and burdened smiles), the unexpected trips to the ER (where I saw a baby, the lone survivor in a car accident), the uncomfortable silences (everyone ignores the elephant in the room), the chemo treatments (the lethal is considered a cure), the tears (so many tears), the cancer center (the place my mom always spoke of but would never let me go), the crying (no reservations, no shame), the first time I was told that there was no hope left (it didn’t even hit me until I saw his thinning hair and frail legs threatening to buckle underneath him), the rapid downward spiral of his health (a lot less beautiful than the spiral staircases), the last moments I had with him (I wiped his brow, kissed his forehead, whispered “I love you”, and left the room), the morning my father woke me up and told me... the visitation... the funeral… but everything was gray.
My life had gone from full color to black and white and shades of gray.
Numbness is a vital part of the grieving process, like the painkillers after surgery. With so much pain surrounding us after someone dies, I don’t know how we make it. I still don’t know how I made it.
I remember my mother sobbing in the middle of the night, on multiple occasions, thinking no one but my father could hear her; she doesn’t know how good my hearing is. She grew distant for a while, they both did.
Not purposefully.
But, I’m sure they were reminded of their first death; their first real heartbreak. The first time they realized that life could be snuffed out quickly and easily, but not without leaving a mess in its wake. The first time it really hit them that the world keeps on turning regardless of who is gone. The first time that they realized that holidays just won’t be the same any more.
I hate to say it like this, but my grandfather’s death taught me more than any one’s life ever has. No amount of reading, or thinking, could’ve taught me what experience has in these past few months.
I learned that crying in front of strangers is not something to be afraid of, that familial bonds are stronger than any friendship, that it’s okay to wince at words like funeral and prostate cancer, that it’s okay to accept help even if you don’t think you need it, that sometimes all that remains are faded photographs of times long gone...
Experience is a cruel, but efficient, teacher.
Life is messy; it is not definite.
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
It doesn’t matter, becayse both are one in the same.
Nothing lasts forever.