Grandpa: For Alltid
There’s this burning ache… it wells up and my throat begins to close, short of breath, I panic… just as I’m able to take a deep breath, the tears fall. I try to catch them, conceal them, hide them from the world. I try to be okay. I am okay. Will be okay… right?!?! Massive pain… a void that seems surreal, impossible, yet it’s so piercing… how can it be this way? How can someone we love be with us one day, one moment, one breath… then be gone? How can we stand by and watch someone slowly drift from our grasp and dread the moment they too are gone?…
1930: A Year Worth Remembering
We had the honor of celebrating my grandfather’s birthday yesterday… how lucky am I to have my grandfather still, alive, and well… only, he’s sort of missing. You see, my grandfather has dementia and as you may know by the clinical term, his memory is failing, disappearing into the distance, further and further away. I wonder where he goes? When I sit with him, in the flesh, I see my grandfather, I feel his presence, he is there. He looks up and recognizes me, or at least I think he does, then he disappears. I get my hopes up time and time again, although I am…
