When You Have To Say Goodbye
What I can remember most about that time was that everything seemed to be happening with the volume turned down just a little bit. Other than that, I remember feeling relief, excitement, and guilt that I hated.
Nobody made a big deal about telling us. He passed away on a cool, early summer night, but the news didn’t reach my family until halfway through the next day. I don’t know how my dad took it. It was his dad that died. He heard the news while he was at work, but he never left. He just stayed on-site and kept working.
I found out after school. I was in my second year of high school and I’d come home like usual and went up to my room. I was finishing watching a show before I started on my homework. I’m not sure when anymore, but at some point, my mom walked into my room and told me what had happened. He was a tough man who had been sick for a while and didn’t like needing help. They had only just managed to get him to go to a hospital the day before his passing.
I didn’t know how to react. I asked when the funeral would be and what I should wear. My mom told me about going to the viewing in two days and then the funeral the day after, and that we would go shopping tomorrow. When she left my room I sat there for a few minutes trying to imagine everything I knew about death. My grandpa had been a Christian man which meant he was up in heaven somewhere enjoying himself. And also meant there was no real reason to grieve for him. Except the problem was that I wasn’t grieving and that I didn’t have any particular feelings of loss that I could recognize.
Truthfully, I had never known the guy well. He could barely talk. You had to listen real close and sit right next to him to make out whatever he said. Whenever I went to his house my sister and I would always play at the park nearby or with his old toys. We never cared. We didn’t get to know him.
The funeral was that Thursday. Three days away. On the first day, I went to school and spoke to all my teachers to sort out the school work I would be missing. I sat in my classes and tried to sort everything out in my mind. I wanted to be completely surrounded by people. The issue with that though was that I knew it was wrong. I thought that I was supposed to want to be alone and mourn and cry for my loss. Everybody else was sorry for my loss. Why wasn’t I?
Eventually, the day of the funeral came. The sun was shining and everything was hot. I was pulled out of school early with my sisters and brother and sent to get ready in my long black skirt and black t-shirt that made me look lumpy in all the wrong places. I did up my hair, put on some makeup and waited, ready, to head off. The funeral itself was boring, which I expected, but it was afterward that I didn’t anticipate. Everybody seemed happy. Family caught up on missed events with other family. People met and talked and smiled. At first, I was angry. I wondered if any of these people even cared about the man lying dead in his grave. I was aware of the irony. I hadn’t been able to feel anything for the death either. It was at that point that I felt a little bad for my grandpa. But those brief, pure moments of unselfish pity were interrupted by another feeling that squashed all the air out of my lungs. What if this were all that happened at my own funeral when I die?
The thought subsided soon and everyone moved on with the agenda. I molded with the crowd. I smiled politely and held a conversation with distant relatives. At dinner, I ate my food without looking around the table at anybody. And then I went home feeling even odder than before.
It wasn’t until that night that things changed. I couldn’t sleep, so I sat myself up to watch a movie. The same movie that would quickly become one of my favourites. There was a young woman who fell in love with a man, they have a child together, and then they have another. All of this happening in their small apartment home. However, on the day of their second child’s birth, the father dies. The mother moves out to the country with her kids and does everything in her power to give them the best lives they possibly can have. And they do. They each chose their own paths to follow. But, this leads the son to leave home. The mother begs him not to because he’s young and she can still help him. But the son knows what he wants. In the end, he leaves and the mother is left crying for her boy, but smiling too because she is proud of him.
It was at that point that I started crying. Silent tears slid down my cheeks and I felt a great sadness in my chest that was directed at nothing. It carried no guilt or shame. It was just a heavy feeling that rolled out of me. And then, after the crying stopped and the movie ended, I felt as if everything had passed. The great sadness came and I went, washing everything clean as it did. I was left feeling empty, but weightless. And I knew that everything was alright, as cheesy as that sounds.