It is for me. Purely for me. I need a moment, a space, a place, where I can be very sad.
You see, I'm not ready. I'm not willing or . . . . I don't know. I'm not prepared to, although I'm going to, take my children with me down to Greenwich Hospital this weekend and say goodbye to my grandfather.
He's had a stroke and has an infection in his heart.
My mother and her brothers had a long discussion with him today. He wants off the medication, on the morphine, and, well, off the planet. On his terms. On his decision.
I realize some may read that to mean he has a suicide urge. I don't know why I'm going to address that since, as I pointed out, this one isn't for you anyway. He doesn't. He just knows, as we all do, that he is very ill and will not get better, will not shake this, will not improve, will no longer have a quality of life to speak of, will no longer what, exactly?
I need a moment. I will not cry at my desk, ok?
Will no longer be able to put the top down in the car like he did when I was a kid in the autumn to look at the leaves; will no longer speak to me in that outrageous half English, half Cambridge, all 1930's Harvard accent;
I'm not ready to finish this right now. I am not ready to reduce to a list, in some electronic form, my precious memories of him. Not yet. I'll have to do it soon. Some of these memories, frankly, go to the absolute core of who I am as a person. They are my touchstones, rubbed a little shiny and smooth at the edges, but they are experiences that have formed me. His influence on my life cannot be overstated.
But I cannot reflect on it all now. No.
Now, I have to go home and celebrate my wedding anniversary today. Well, maybe not celebrate.
I am devastated. I knew that he was going to go one day. And I always worried that if he did, I would collapse, that I would get all hollowed out and slowly deflate. That may still happen, I suppose. Beats me.
I am closing comments for the first time.
Posted by Random Penseur at November 4, 2005 04:38 PM