I've been spending lots of time with my grandma since she got laid off and I came home for winter. She's 76, so honestly, I was surprised that she was hired at all. Over the summer she was looking for work, and I remember her telling me that she had to fill out a certain number of applications in order to collect unemployment. She told me that she asked for an application at Wet Seal, but they told her that they were waiting for the "kids" to apply. One day my cousin and I went to Target and saw her standing alone in the parking lot. We asked her what she was doing, and she said that she and a friend went to look for jobs. Her friend had dropped her off at the Farm Fresh next door, and she was waiting for my uncle to pick her up. My cousin and I stayed with her till he came. This kind of broke my heart.
Anyone who knows me knows that in October I lost my granddad, my grandma's husband. This is also part of the reason I've been spending so much time with her. No one wants her to be alone, not even her. She told me she hates being alone and just cries all the time because all she does is think of my granddad. They were married for fifty-five years, and knew each other for maybe more than sixty; I'm not sure. When she is alone, though, she said she keeps it quiet and calls for him, begging him to talk to her. Since he passed away, some things have happened at their house that make us all think he's still there. I'm okay with it. I wish I was around when they happened. I wish I was around when everything happened.
She remembers the dates to every important event in her life. She's been telling me stories about everything. About how my granddad was a good man and did anything to help anyone. About how my great-grandmother didn't like him at first, but eventually took to him as her own son. About his heart attack twenty-some years ago and how it should have killed him. She showed me his coin collection, his states' information collection, and told me that he loved history - something I never knew.
The last time I was at her house, she could tell I was getting tired. She asked if I wanted to sleep in my granddad's chair. It was his chair, the one where he would always be sitting anytime I came over. He did everything in that chair, sat, watched tv, ate, slept, everything until Hospice gave him a hospital bed. I never got to see this, and part of me is glad. I had been wanting to sit in that chair for some time. I hadn't sat in it since we held prayers for him days after his funeral, two months ago.
Three weeks after he died, my brother called me from California telling me that our other granddad passed away. I felt like everything I was feeling had to be put on hold, because now here was this thing, this thing that had just happened to us. There were things to be done; it was all very methodical. I didn't get to go to the funeral. Tickets were to expensive for me to say good bye in person.
During a recent visit to my psychologist, he asked me about how I was dealing with everything. I explained that when I'm in school in Richmond, surrounded by things that have no connection to him it is easy to deal, repress, I didn't know which one. As soon as I felt like I was feeling something, I tried to think about something else. I tried to keep it all on pause. I told him that I knew that one day I would just cry and cry, and it was just something I had to do, but I didn't know when that would occur. An hour, a year.
When I sat in his chair, my grandma put a blanket over me and went upstairs to put away her laundry that we had just finished. I set it to recline, just as my granddad did many times before. I closed my eyes, began to cry, and fell asleep.
Un-pause.
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