Tomorrow

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my beloved grandfather's death. I cannot even look at the date on the calendar w/o my eyes filling up with tears. How can an entire year have passed so quickly? How did I survive this past year w/o hearing his voice? So many bad things happened last year but the pain of most have started to fade. The pain of losing Pap still seems as fresh as the moment it happened. There is such a huge void in my life without him. He was my guardian, my protector, my hero. I've felt lost and aimless this year without him. So many regrets....I didn't call more often, I didn't visit more often, I didn't spend enough time with him when he came to Texas....I wasn't deserving of him and his love. My biggest regret is not following my gut and flying to Ohio last April when he went back into the hospital. I looked at tickets. I discussed it with my dad. I talked myself out of it because my dad didn't want to go and I didn't want to go alone. I thought he would get better again and go home again and I'd have a chance to see him in June or July when I came up for my summer visit. Oh how I regret that decision. I resent that my cousin got to sit with him those last few weeks and hold his hand at night when no one else was there. That should have been my job. I'm the oldest and I let him down.

They delivered my grandfather's headstone a few weeks ago and Dad wanted to fly us up there to be there when they installed it. Again, we talked about it and then talked each other out of it. I'm not sure I can go up there again. I adore my grandmother and I would love to visit but the thought of being in that house without him in his chair or at the kitchen table eating an egg sandwich just the way we loved them - just seems wrong to me. I grew up in that house with him laughing with me, teaching me to play cards, singing along with me as we sang "Delta Dawn" and "Candyman", holding my hand when something made me sad, protecting me when I was in trouble with my parents, singing my praises at every turn. He could make me feel like I could do anything.

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the beginning of a very bad week in my life beginning with the death of Pap and ending with the surgery complications and hospital stay with my baby boy. I'm not sure how I survived either incident but really cannot fathom how I survived them both in the same week. E's complications changed my focus away from Pap and probably helped get me thru my grief faster than I ever could have otherwise. E shows no signs of remember anything his little body went thru last June and I'm grateful for that. I'll carry the scars for him in my mind and heart. And I'll put them right next to the scars of losing my Grandpa Jack and my father in law last year too. But the biggest scar is the one taking the longest to heal and it is the open wound I will carry forever until I get a chance to see my Pap once again.