my grandpapa & grannys house got sold, too.

Dear Plexi,

My grandparents house sold not that long ago. Last Sunday we were all there, picking it to pieces, taking sofas and paintings off the walls and piling them into vans. leaving only the bare bones.

I felt in my bones the way your poem, 'Grandpa & Grandma’s house sold today' never once mentions the house. It made me think of how, on Sunday, when we gutted each room, it wasn't sad. Because the house was already soulless, already gone, and the sadness is not in the loss of the house, but the loss of everything it contained. The memories of the loss. I ramble, I fear, but your poem stirred up so many feelings.

My grandparents too, were Christian. Are Christian. I don't know how the tenses work when they are meant to still exist in some form up there. I hope that everything they believed is true. I hope both of our grandparents' are up there, somewhere, together, maybe.

It is so wonderful, though the positive words taste wrong in this context, that you were there when they passed. I was not there. My granny passed in her sleep, quietly I suppose, because grandpapa didn't stir. The nurse told him in the morning that he'd been dozing next to a corpse. I'm glad she went peacefully, though in truth she'd gone long before then, succumbing to dementia, forgetting our names.

Grandpapa died of a heart attack. It was quick, a shock. Three days before he'd sat with me and my brother in the garden, drinking tea. He still walked to get the newspaper every morning. He would've been 90 this year. I'm glad he went quickly, but I was angry at the time. He was meant to see me graduate, maybe make it to my eldest brothers wedding, in a wheelchair, in a decade.

Your poem made me remember all this, so fresh again. Your poem is so beautifully, heart wrenchingly written. I would say I'm sorry for your loss but that seems wrong. You gained so much from having them in your life. Maybe not for as long as we would have liked. But to grieve is to love, and be loved. I won't say sorry about that to you, or me.

Your grandparents would be so proud of you. In a way I hope, if they are up there, they can't remember you because if they do they must miss you so, so much. But then again I know they would disagree with me and proclaim that the pain would be worth it to remember how loved they were, and how they loved.

I'll stop myself now, I do go on.

Sending you much love, Plexi.

From,

Rose.