About Her.

It was like an Earthquake. I was given warnings, I knew it was coming. Yet when it came, I was still unprepared. I was still crushed and devasted. I had tried to imagine a life without her, how it might feel and how I would handle it but nothing I imagined came close to the real thing. I still feel it like after shocks. I still feel like I'm just trying to rebuild and once I do, it all crumbles down again.

I gave myself time. Time to grieve, time to miss her. The pain seemed to numb after a while so I told myself to get up, to smile, to live. To feel her and remember her. I distracted myself. I buried the pain and I kept myself busy. I would think of her a hundred times a day but only for a moment because I would feel that weight start to return, I could feel my breath start to leave me, and I could feel the rush of anger and emptyness start to surface and I just couldn't go there so I didn't. I pushed it away and I moved on. I kept doing this over and over. Every day. I kept working, laughing, and doing whatever I could to convince myself that I was OKAY. 

I thought about sharing this many times but could never just write it down and maybe I wasn't sure if I even wanted to talk about it. But I think it's time I realize that I'm NOT okay and that it's okay to not be. Last month I had a dream about her. Everything about it was so real and not like most dreams where everything is skewed and just not right. It felt real in the dream and it still felt real when I woke up.

It was the simplest dream. I just walked into my office and she was there, just sitting looking  beautiful, healthy, and happy. I rushed over saying grandma!? How are you here? I missed you so much. She simply said in her usual loving and caring voice, I just wanted to check on you and see how you're doing but I can't stay long. I just held her and cried and it felt so real. The smells, the sounds, the feeling of her clothes and hands. But, before I could start talking to her, the dream was over, just as she slipped away from me in real life. She was gone and once again, I didn't get to say goodbye. 

As much as the dream resurfaced feelings of grief and anger, it also filled me with a moment of peace like I really did get to see her again. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm not a believer in religion anymore and I'm not sure what I believe about God or heaven but I have been feeling very drawn to an idea of a greater universal power. I think there are different dimensions that we don't see or understand.

I don't know if there's a heaven that my grandma went to but I feel that she exists somewhere or maybe I just hope she does. Maybe I'm crazy for thinking she exists in another dimension and was somehow able to visit me through my dream. I know the more realistic explanation is that dreams are from memories and your brain processing things which would mean my dream was just a portrayal of my thoughts and memories and it's just me trying to deal with it. I don't know. 

I guess I wanted to write about it so I don't forget it. As dumb or crazy as it sounds to others, it was a very real and important dream for me. I feel like I'm still trying to process her absence. I feel like I am genuinely happy and like I'm functioning fine but then I realized that deep down inside, I have this giant hole of pain that I've carefully covered up and disguised it as something else. In reality, the pain and guilt and regret is too much that I am literally terrified to really deal with it.

It's been almost 3 months since she passed. Every time I think I've come to terms with it, I get a harsh reminder that I'm not. Another of these times happened last week when I was picking my daughter up from dance. I waited in the foyer because they weren't quite done and there was a woman there. She looked about my grandma's age and I watched her smile as she watched her granddaughter dance. She reminded me so much of my grandma from her clothes, to her demeanor that I could just imagine it was my grandma. It took everything in me not to throw myself into her arms like some kind of crazy person. I went into the bathroom to collect myself then got my daughter and had a meltdown in our car, in the parking lot. 

My grandma was my favorite person in this world. She was my light, my hope, my compass, my safety, my mother. My husband told me the night before her funeral to let her continue to be a light for me, to not let her absence be a darkness. I've been trying but it's more clear to me lately that I'm failing. I'm failing because I'm trying to rush this process. I'm trying to pretend she's not really gone. I'm trying to ignore the pain because it's scary. IT FUCKING HURTS. I can't explain the pain. It feels as real to me as any physical pain. I HATE talking about it, I hate that I'm even writing this blog post because what is it going to do? I don't ever feel better after I talk about it, it just makes me think about it more and I go deeper into that hole that I'm trying to keep covered.

And then I wonder if I'm being dramatic, if I'm imagining it all? If it's not as bad as I think it is. Maybe I am just crazy and I shouldn't think about these things too much. Maybe I shouldn't sit here and write this depressing blog post because no one will understand and being honest, I don't think anyone really cares either. I don't blame them, I wouldn't care about the death of your grandma either. Why? Because grief is something our minds do to cope with a tramautic thing. Even if two people lost the same person, their grief will be completely different. We simply can't feel another person's pain so instead, we feel sorry for them. But I hate that part too. 

I know if she is in another dimension or heaven or wherever that she wishes I would be okay. I know she would want me to be the happiest I could be, she wouldn't want me to worry or cry. She was always like that. I feel like I'm letting her down. I don't want to NOT think about her but I can't describe the dark place that I go when I do let it all in. All I want is to go back for just a minute to a world that she's still in. I so DESPERATELY want to hug her. I want to tell her all the things I never said. I never told her what she meant to me, I never told her how many times she saved me and how she made me into the person I am. I want to say goodbye. I just want to say goodbye. I just want to tell her I love her. Just one more time, I just want to say goodbye.