Many people complain about visiting family; they detest the holidays spent around the table with their entire family gathered around. Children are making noise, breaking things, and causing headaches all around. Siblings with a grudge are sitting on opposite sides of the room, only making eye contact when they are casting sideways glances at each other down their noses. Parents are just trying to make everyone get along, and grandpa just wants to watch baseball. Let me tell you something. I would do anything to have this again. I would do anything to re-live and change my childhood. To participate in boisterous and disruptive behavior that invites the chiding from any adult would be heaven, if only everyone was there. But Daniel isn't, and hasn't been for some time. The same thing is true for my grandparents. My mom's parents have both passed away by now, but it's still recent...and it still hurts like hell. I'd love to sit on the porch swing with my grandpa again and listen to the birds sing, watching them dance from tree to tree. I wish I could smell my grandma's banana bread and taste it again, even if she did slather it in butter. I wish I could feel her greeting hug again when she'd hug me tightly and say how much I've grown. I wish I could go back to when I was a kid and choose to turn off the TV and learn Italian from my grandpa or play rummy with my grandma.
But I can't. There is only one way for me to spend time with them now, only one way to visit. Today, I picked wildflowers to decorate both my little brother's grave as well as the grave of my grandparents. It was hard, seeing their fate etched in stone, knowing that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to change it. Today, I felt the deep pang of loss shoot through my stomach and I felt my depression creeping in. My way of coping? Picking more wildflowers. Sprinkling wild violets, bluets, and dandelions on the gravestones, making them...less grave. Less dark. Less painful? How would you feel in my situation?
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Difficult TimesK. MurphyI am a writer and a lover of small moments and the little things in life. ArchivesCategories |