Another Year without Him

My grandfather died almost two years ago, he was very close to his grandchildren who miss him ever so much. Most of this second year has been less painful for me, probably perhaps I've been way too busy to shed as many thoughts to his non-presence. His death was a nasty surprise, although we all expected that sooner than later he may pass away (he was almost 84); he was a mighty healthy mad man. When he died he was in a hospital bed, had lost most of his blood by a hemorrhage due to an undiagnosed ulcer. He was not aware of that, and almost until the very moment when he died, challenged Death relentlessly. He was tied up to the bed because he wanted to get off, feisty until almost the very end. That's how he died, with his children next to him caressing him, my mom at the very last moment guiding him during his departure.

It's hard to think about that, very hard for me. He had been forever there for me, since the moment when i came out from my mom's womb, during my million of visits to his house, he gave me my first taste of Tequila tipping some with his finger (or so he claimed), told me that almost everyday he dreamed with my dead grandmother (no one knew about this as I later found out), spoke English words to my husband (words that he remembered from when he went to kindergarten). My doctoral degree was hundred per cent dependant on him. It would have simply never happened in the way it did. And when he died, unfortunately I wasn't there. I don't flagellate my self about this, things happen for a reason... The last time I heard his voice over the phone was on a xmas eve, then I had a massive sensation that he would die very soon, and so he did two or three weeks later.

It's been hard enough to expect time and space to help me in understanding the great experience of death in the family. Probably, it is in moments like that when faith and religious beliefs of any sort come in assistance to give sense and structure to what otherwise represents the total end of the body and mind. Are we really more than just a chemical reaction? Is the self more than just communication from brain activity? Or is brain activity a tool of the self to express it to the outside world? how can this help to understand the result of the dead ones?

Whatever is the case, the fact is that people we love come and go. Sometimes they go forever. And we deal with their absence, thinking about the shared life experience, thus making them immortal. My good friend called me once he learnt that I've been back home and back here from the after-funeral proceedings. He said that few years earlier he had lost his grandmother, with whom he also had had a meaningful relationship. His words still come to my mind as the truest consolation that anyone could have given me: nothing will fill the space he has left in my life, it will be forever like a missing step in the stairs.