i send my SOS to the world- this is my message in a bottle.

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A Celebration of Armando

I sent this email to a friend today.

My grandpa died today.

And I'm mostly writing this email because it's quiet and everyone is
sleeping and I need the words to go somewhere, this cluttered
headspace that never translates into the reality of verbalized words.
It is more for me than for any other reason, and yet it needs to go
somewhere. It needs to be heard and yet I am still even now, as I
write, unsure of how I feel in the quiet space that haven't been given
light just yet.

My mom called me during the open mic night from my grandma's phone and
I picked up thinking it was her, only to be greeted with sobs in my
mother's voice. The conversation was less than two minutes, around
7:40pm, in between choked whispers and pained words. He stopped
breathing at home, 911 was summoned, but he quickly died afterwards,
around 7:05. So still fresh with grief, she informed me and then hung
up quickly to call my sisters.

I haven't talked to her since, knowing that she's using her time to
inform all of my uncles and aunts, relatives and family. My mom is the
unofficial matriarch of my extended family, and I know that the
majority of all the logistical aspects, strength and support that
everyone looks to will come from her. I can only imagine how she feels
right now, and part of me in a way, can't bring myself to think of it
at all.

I have barely cried at all. Part of me tries to summon up things that
will make me cry, in a way to have some tangible expression of grief
that will hopefully alleviate this weighted feeling that clings to me.
I only managed to cry twice, both times a great form of release, but I
know that there is so much more to this than the simple shedding of
tears.

In a way, I sort of felt like this was coming. I knew, before I left
that the liklihood of either of my grandparents passing while I was up
here was a definite possibility. Enough so that when I left both
initially and during spring break, the last time I saw them I drank in
knowing that it could be the last time.

So now that it's here- should I be surprised?

What is grief anyway?

Big abstract questions that I think I'm thinking about mainly because
I'm terrified of the reality that awaits me at home. Mostly because I
know that soon this suspended state of gray will be replaced a very
real visual image. While I'm here, I'm away from my mother's tears, my
grandmother's ashen face, the smell of wilting flowers and the sound
of sniffles. Here, my grief is mine and mine alone. It's strange to be
away from all the people who are going through the same thing as I am
at home.

I feel so numb, so removed from what I really want to feel. My grandpa
and grandma are like second parents to me. They lived with us until I
was 13, and live.. or lived, I guess, in PQ. They are stability and
warmth to me. Were...are... I'm not good with the tenses yet. It
hasn't sunk in yet at all. The last time I kissed my grandpa's
wrinkled, papery cheek, in his apartment, the familiar hum and hiss of
the oxygen tank provided it's constant forced inhalation and
exhalation... that was the last time.

I keep going through the memories looking for something.... I guess.
Anything? I'm not quite sure yet... Mostly, the sound and feel of
typing and writing is soothing to me. I'm listening to the Fiona Apple
track you gave me of "Across the Universe"...

I'm reading a book that Stacey got today, by Paulo Cohello, called
"Veronika Decides to Die". Funny, in a ironic, morbid way. Anyway,
it's about a woman who tries to commit suicide. It's about death,
life, normalacy and the renewed ability to live your life everyday.
This is the passage I keep reading.

"Outside the barred window, the sky was thick with stars, and the
moon, in its first quarter, was rising behind the mountains. Poets
loved the full moon; they wrote thousands of poems about it, but it
was the new moon that Veronkia loved best because there was still room
for it to grow, to expand, to fill the whole of its surface with light
before its inevitable decline."

I almost can't wrap my mind around the concept of forever. I am not
going to see him, again. Maybe in heaven, if my faith becomes more
solid and I can inequivocally embrace that idea again. But for now,
the reality is that I will no longer hear the rhythmic clack of mah
jongg tiles at family events and know that my grandfather is at the
helm. I will no longer hear his voice checking up on my progress at
school, or the random gestures of generosity. I will no longer see my
grandparents side by side, together after over 50 years of marriage,
numerous fights, separations, children, grandchildren, triumphs and
staggering failures. I am afraid that the time for my grandma,
especially without him, combined with cancer, diabetes and alzheimers
will slowly usher out the time of her life as well. But maybe it's
better him, now, before his face starts to fade from the corners of
her memory.

I feel so removed from everything. It still hasn't sunk in yet. I
celebrate his life, and I know he lived it so fully. I know that he
was entwined in all that I am now, I know that he knows that I love
him. I said it at every single opportunity, enough to leave it's
imprint, enough so that I know that he'll never wonder about it. Just
like everyone else that I love- I can't bear the idea of unverbalized
love. He knew it. So I can't grieve in that way, I have no regrets.
All I'm doing maybe is missing the pieces of him that don't reside in
me. Missing the parts I can't replicate in my own mannerisms, missing
the parts that I didn't inherent from him. I know I have his
stubborness, his vitality, his propensity to dream largely and
sometimes foolishly, his love of taking risks.

Those are all things I recognize in homage to him. Those are all
things that leave indelible imprints upon me.

I celebrate all that he's passed on to me, but will miss all the
things that he was to me.

He was my grandfather, the man whose cigarettes I stole and hid during
the anti smoking week in elementary school out of fear for his health,
the man who endured two bouts of lung cancer but still managed to give
me bites of his hospital mashed potatoes when I was a kid because he
knew I loved them, the man who picked me up from school but got
speeding tickets in front of it - much to my embarassement, the man
who fostered my love for the History Channel, the man who still dyed
his hair black until now, the man who loved a good joke, the man who
was once upright and proud who turned into a man who was not ashamed
to cry at family events towards the end of his life because of the
beauty of all of us being together in the same room- in America, after
all these years.

I'm celebrating him now, to you, quietly, at 3:01 in the morning
because I know no other way.

I will be heading home sooner than I thought. I really don't know when
that will be, because I haven't spoken to my mom yet, and I don't
think it'll be tomorrow. Most likely Saturday, although there is
always that possibility it may be tomorrow. But still plan on coming
to Stacey's after work. I want to have one last night here, one
suspended sense of reality. In a way, I want it desperately because I
don't want to leave here, no matter what the circumstances, without
closure. I want the normalacy of living my life because I need it.

Thank you for listening/reading. Mostly though, thank you for being
the kind of friend that I can send this kind of email to in the middle
of the night- full of conjectures about morality and life and death
and love and know mostly that the words are understood. I appreciate
that more than anything else.

-angela

3:11 a.m. - Friday, Jun. 03, 2005

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