Five of those have been in 2009.
It's been a rough year for me, and it reflects in the standards to which I hold myself at school. While at one time I would normally at least try to throw myself enthusiastically into my studies, and land at least somewhere middle-ground, this semester and last I just couldn't care less. But this isn't about me blaming my downward-spiraling academic career on personal losses; it's about me dealing with the losses themselves.
How does one grieve when one does not know how? Yes, I get sad, and yes, I'm upset - but I can't show that, and especially not in front of people. I am always the comforter, not the comfort-ee. If I start to tear up at the funeral, I blink very slowly and try to think of something so mundane and normal that it would make you laugh. For example, feeding my cats. Yes, I've sat at a funeral home and thought about whether or not my cats had food at home as an alternative to crying. I think you ought to understand that I weep pretty easily, I've noticed, at least this last year - could possibly have something to do with all the grief I've experienced - but when I cry, oh Lordy, you better have a box of tissues and a bottle of water, because it's going to take a while and it's going to be long and extensive. So I just don't cry anymore. And it probably has something to do with my "mothering" factor. You see, my brother is three years younger than I am, and for all that he's big and tough and manly, he's the more emotional of the two of us. Having mothered him for years, when I know that he's going to fall apart, I feel that I should be the strong one. I bring him a handkerchief when I know he wouldn't have remembered; I hug him and wipe his face and try to stop the rush of pain and grief I know he feels. I echo it, but he shows it. Maybe I feel like that's good enough. If both of us ever got to bawling, well, then, you can forget it, we'd be pretty much worthless to everybody until we got ourselves under control.
Besides being strong for him, I feel that randomly erupting into tears bring an awkward factor to any conversation that is not between me and my nuclear family. So for all five funerals this year, I have not yet once sat down and actually bawled my heart out like I yearn to; I haven't had the time, or the energy, nor do I want to piece myself together after it's over. I know in my head that they're gone, but I don't think my heart really wants to admit it yet. And if it comes all at once... it's going to be Hiroshima for my emotions.
Not all these deaths were completely unexpected, but even so, it doesn't make them any easier to take.
January 28, 2009: Ed, my stepgrandfather - well, my grandma's second husband. Dad's technical stepfather. I don't know what to call him relationship wise, because to me from the time I was born on he was just "Ed" - passed away in the morning. He'd gotten a cold when they were supposed to head back to Mississippi, where they spent their winters, and since she doesn't drive they both had to stay here in Pennsylvania. A month later, his cold hadn't gotten any better, and he was put on oxygen to help his breathing. On this day in January, he got up in the morning, told my grandma he wanted eggs, sat down in his armchair, and when she came back from the kitchen he'd died. I'm the closest family on her side when I'm up here at school - it's about a 20-minute drive for me, and of course I skipped all my classes and went to her. Some of Ed's family had already arrived, and grandma was, as expected, a wreck. It started to blizzard and I had no choice but to leave - I was driving a '94 Acura Integra at the time and while I loved the car, I had no winter tires and she lives on a very hilly, dirt back road and I didn't feel like getting stuck. I had to go, jump back into the college grind until the funeral, and then I only missed those afternoon classes. There is no time to grieve here.
March 1, 2009: Kenny, my cousin, passed away on this night. Thirty-three years old and his heart just gave up on him. He'd sat down with some friends at their house to watch TV. He kissed their little boy goodnight and shuddered, stuttered, sucked in some air. They asked what was wrong, and he said nothing, nothing. A few minutes later, he fell into cardiac arrest and died before the ambulance arrived. That was how I began spring break.
July 20, 2009: My Great-Uncle Ken, who had been in perfect health and had, in fact, just sold me my current car - fell deathly ill, and then into a coma before he passed. He had just finally moved out of his house and into an assisted living home so he could have help taking care of his wife. I had literally just seen him three weeks earlier, as spry and witty as ever.
September 1, 2009: My Great-Aunt Lil, who had prior to this been in fine physical health to my knowledge, died. It may not have been surprising, since she had so recently lost her husband (my Uncle Ken, above), but it still stung. This is how I began my fall semester.
October 6, 2009: My Grandpap Rainbow finally passed on, putting him out of the pain and suffering he'd been experiencing for months as his liver failed him and his bowels failed him. He was adamant enough about the fact that he was ready to go - that his human body was done with him, and that was fine because "he was done with it, too." Old coot. Three-quarters of a century old and he'd said on that day, his birthday, "I might not be around for next year, y'know. I'm the last one left." It was true, all his siblings - older and younger - were all already gone.
I could go on and on about the stories I have, my reactions to their deaths. Maybe someday on here I will. Oh, the stories I could tell... but the important one is that may very well bring that total up to six funerals for this year, because my Aunt Kak is predicted to leave us within the next few days. Now, I could have fun - and again, maybe another day, I will - trying to explain how exactly I'm related to some of these people and why I'm not sure what to call them, but that's because my family tree is all kinds of chaos. Let's keep her my Aunt, plain and simple. Aunt Kak has been fighting cancer for almost... eight years now, I think? It's been a long haul, and through it all she's smiled and laughed, and taken care of Uncle Skeet (who operates on 1/3 of one lung) and been upbeat and noncommital about the whole ordeal... and again, like my Grandpap, her body's just done. It's throwing in the towel, it's run up the white flag, it's done. She's just tired. Her mind's all there. Her eyes were bright. I stopped over at the hospital and she lit up with a "Krissy!" mumbled through lips that can barely speak, she's that tired, and that's her through and through, the only person in my life who's ever called me that. She chuckled and kissed my cheek and held my hand and it was like we were at home.
And the doctors are giving her less than a week to live. They'll send her home to die, and I'm left here behind, looking for something to cling to in the vacuum of empty space left behind. And yet I know that this is a cycle of life. Death is a part of our existence. I just wish... I just selfishly wish that it wasn't hitting so hard, so close to home, all at once.
"Take death for example
A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding it
We make extraordinary efforts to delay it
And often consider its intrusion a tragic event
Yet we’d find it hard to live without it
Death gives meaning to our lives
It gives importance and value to time
Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it
If death were indefinately put off
The human psyche would end up
Well like the gambler of the Twilight Zone episode"
-"Ray Kurzweil On Death," Our Lady Peace
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