I vaguely remember Poppy's death. Somehow I repressed it, but what I do remember is how every time you would come over my eyes would stray behind you, looking for him, trying to comprehend that he was truly gone, and in turn I lost time with you. I spent time comparing you to him, my love for him and my love for you. I try to remember things about Poppy, but most of the things I remember aren't my own memories, but pictures I have created in my head of the stories I have been told. But with you, I have those memories, those little details that I'll always remember; like your haphazardly scripted name at the bottom of every birthday or Christmas card, and how your eyes lit up when making Christmas Eve, or Thanksgiving dinner.
I didn't want to believe that the strong, independent, stubborn woman who was my grandma had cancer. I wanted it to be a sick joke, one that I hadn't been clued in on, but time pushed on, and everyday you came closer to leaving me, us, and I refused to see it until it was too late and I was forced to. I don't remember anything else from that day, I couldn't even tell you the date, but I remember that strange feeling telling me that I needed to go home for lunch, so I did. I wasn't prepared for what I would find. I wasn't prepared to see you laying on the cold kitchen tile, your legs splayed out on the floor and your head carefully tucked into the soft cushioning of the dish rag you had grabbed once you found yourself on the floor, and a dazed look on your face. This moment forced me to realize that you were dying, that some unknown force had decided that your time on this earth was coming to an end. I found a twisted sense of humor in this: her life was coming to an end, and mine was just beginning. She wouldn't be there to see me go to prom, graduate high school, or graduate college, get married, have children, no more holiday dinners together, no more anything. The woman I had always seen as a force to be reckoned with, untouchable, lay before me weakened and fragile, by time, and I did not know how to deal with this impending loss.
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Day after day I went to the hospital, the nursing home facility they placed you in until you qualified for hospice, and watched you wither away before my very eyes. That was more painful than actually losing you. I couldn't stand to see you like that, a shell of the woman you once were, so the night before you died I refused to go to the hospital. Maybe somewhere deep in my subconscious I knew that it was your time to go, or maybe I was just protecting myself, or maybe I wasn't allowing myself to grieve for you, but I could no longer watch you suffer. At the same moment when I was trying to save myself from feeling more of a loss than the one I knew was coming, I robbed myself of a final goodbye.
Grieving. That's a tough thing for me, and probably for most people. I don't know if anyone every truly knows how to grieve or deal with that type of loss, but it has taken me over a year to admit that I never grieved for you in the way I should have. I resented you for your bitterness in the final years of your life, while we both should have been enjoying the time we had left together. I remember in the days after your death, Lindsay looked at me and said "you need to grieve." My younger sister was the spark in my grieving process. At first I cried, relived our memories, admired you, and now I see the strength you possessed throughout your whole life, but also can see your faults. But what I learned most of all through this process is that you never truly move on from a loss such as this. You will always miss the person you lost; that pain, that loss, will always be there, and it's okay to cry, to feel that loss, as long as it doesn't stop you from living. Loss taught me that just because someone is no longer here anymore doesn't mean you love them any less than when they were.
So, I guess, this my goodbye.
