Dear Gramma
it's been nearly eight years & it still hurts like hell
Dear Gramma,
We put up Christmas this past weekend. Some say it’s early, others ask why we waited so long.
Every year around this time the weight in my chest feels palpably heavier — the grief I’ve grown to know so well making irrefutable its presence.
I’m having a harder time stomaching the missing you these days. The lump in my throat leaps to its position faster than usual, stealing my smile from my face before it has time to fully form upon remembering you.
This year will be my eighth Christmas without you. You would have turned seventy-three this year.
My whole body feels numb and tingly as I write this. The muscles around my jaw are fully clenched. My nose instinctively scrunches to hold back the tears. I want to scream and hide and run and punch and and and and — instead I fight for a deep belly breath.
Eight years ago I was twenty-two. Eight years ago I was an empty, cracked and faded shell worn away by the violent waves of unresolved trauma. Eight years ago my frontal lobe was still developing, my sense of the world still involved it revolving around me. Eight years ago I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was being left by my boyfriend du jour and waking up at the crack of dawn to bike to work in the pouring rain and change adult diapers to assauge my guilt of having spent settlement money from my car accident on a yoga retreat in Bali.
But what could be worse than finding out the woman who was instrumental in raising you has stage four stomach cancer? What could be worse than the helplessness that consumes your entire being as you watch her lie in pain, unable to do anything more than inject her with the liquid pain killers that hospice left for you to used as needed? What could be worse than hearing her whimper in pain, than words being impossible for her to access yet the pain so great that she can’t help but cry out?
Dear Gramma,
It’s been eight years since I’ve heard your soothing voice, since I’ve seen your deep, caring eyes. It’s been eight years and I still cannot bear the reality that I can’t pick up the phone and call you. I can’t bear the thought that I can’t invite you over for egg nog and cookies, can’t show you the home I’ve built with my husband, can’t host you and shower you with love and goodies like you did my whole life for us.
Dear Gramma,
Why did it take losing you to become the person I am today?
I wish you could know her. I wish she got the chance to love you. Oh, how she would love you with everything she’s got.
I miss you. I long for you to be earthside so deeply. I live with my heart wide open every single day because of you. The pain of losing you broke me wide open, shattered me like a window that can never be put back together the same way. My grief ruined me — the me that I once was — and in its place I’ve built, piece by piece, a shining stained glass window that I think (I sure hope) you would be proud of.
With love always,
Your Crunchy Girl