So, i woke up feeling good today, despite not sleeping well last night. But things went downhill. I am just kind of sad today and then realized that today would have been my Pop’s 94th birthday. I was in his world since 1972 and it just seems weird not to be able to call him and wish (yell) him a happy birthday. He was on this earth from 1916 to 2009. . . my mind boggles at all that passed in his lifetime.
And then I also found out that a neighbor (whom I did not even know by name) was murdered this past weekend, allegedly by her own husband. Their kids go to Rollie’s school. The family were members at our pool. The family had been missing and then the kids were found at a family member’s and when we heard that, we all knew it was not good, but still didn’t not know what happened to them. Our community has been rocked by the news of her death.
Just a generally sad, and heartbreaking day. Some days I have little faith in the world.
Much to say, and just not gutsy enough to say it, so i haven’t been posting. I have been writing, keeping it to myself. Not bottling it up, but not letting it see light, either. Part of me thinks I am a big pussy for not just writing things out in the name of honesty and forthrightness. The other part of me knows that it might cause irreparable damage.
Or maybe the damage is already done. Am I selfish for wanting to purge all of this heartache? Would it be healthy for me? Or would it just be me seeking vindication, revenge. Even if I was doing it for the right reasons, is it possible that those involved would see it that way? No. I don’t think it’s possible.
Maybe there is a greater power at work. Kids are a balm for grief. No one with young kids has time to sit around and ponder what it was like to hold a loved one’s hand as he took his last shallow breath, exhaled, and departed this world. Sure, it comes to you in flashes, but you don’t have time to really process it.
I know I will, though. It will catch up with me, and I will wrestle with it.
Pop’s not doing so well. Got the call that his vitals were all going downhill pretty quickly. Lisa and I both felt like we wanted to be here for mom and Dad, and for Pop. We took separate cars, to accommodate our adult schedules.
Driving down this afternoon was strange. I cried in my car on the highway, driving 80 mph listening to Guns N’ Roses version of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and coming up on a wall of thunderstorm seen from a distance. I could see curtains of rain coming down from the sky, with light shining through too, in that weird way that happens with storms, all green and grey and silver and purple. Some moments the heavens just seem closer.
Just finished writing an obituary for my dying grandfather. It made me feel weepy and it made it seem real that he won’t be with us much longer. Felt the same heaviness when i dropped off a porch swing that he made with his own two hands at a friend’s house last night. It did make me laugh in a bittersweet way that she will be painting it bright pink. Listening to Frightened Rabbit’s “Old Old Fashioned” and reading a story about kids during WWII driving out to a new bridge in Alabama, parking on it, and pulling out an old crank record player and dancing in the moonlight.
Feeling melancholy and weepy, in a life is twisted and beautiful kind of way.
Summer evenings growing up, the Braves were always on TBS in the background. And in the Fall, Larry was on the radio. My first solid memory of him is listening to him call a Kevin Butler field goal kick, sitting in my Mom’s red Caprice Classic station wagon, parked in the lots at the soccer fields across from the water tower, waiting for my soccer game in pouring, freezing rain.
UGA passed on. Larry’s retiring. I’m thinking it just ain’t right if we don’t win a title after all of this. And I’m thinking I’m not the only lifelong Bulldog shedding a tear right now.
I am bummed about illustrator, Pauline Baynes passing. You will be, too, if you were like me and you absolutely lost yourself in Narnia and Middle Earth and the warrens of Watership Down. I never even knew her name. Her name. Very proud that those beautiful maps and covers that drew me into the stories were drawn by a female.
Off to Louisville for T’s grandma’s funeral. Meemaw is gone. I have a lot of thoughts about her, and about how lucky I feel to have known her, but I need to digest the whole thing and will write when I get back. I figure going to ky will give me a little more perspective anyway.
If you pray, or just think good thoughts, make sure they go out to the Toddler family tonight. I love’em all. Even if they are all way too quiet and reserved and in comparison, I look like a loud-mouthed annoying daughter/sister in-law, who probably drinks a little too much and doesn’t know when to bite her tongue.