Don't Like It

I'm the kind of person who likes to laugh. I like to find the funny in unexpected places and draw amusement from it. I usually take all the feelings and thoughts that don't bring a smile or a laugh and shove them into the back corner of a closet in my mind. Then I like to throw hoodies and towels on all those darker thoughts to keep them covered up. Yes, I have a closet in my mind.

Sometimes, though, the thoughts I shoved into the shadowy corner bust out and boss me around. This usually happens at strange and inconvenient times. Like in the middle of the night when I wake up and my pillow is wet with tears. Or when I see a picture. Or hear an old church hymn. Or type these words.

I know I am unusually blessed to have enjoyed all of my grandparents until I reached the ancient age of 40. But, now I am sad. I lost my grandma in March, and two weeks ago I lost my grandpa. I know that it is incredibly rare that I am experiencing the first death of a grandparent this late in life. Still, I have lost my grandma and my grandpa in the last eight months. I am not pleased.

My grandpa was 91, and he was special. I never needed to call ahead - no matter when I stopped by Grandma and Grandpa would be home and Grandpa would pop popcorn. Even if it was 9 A.M. It made me feel like my arrival at their home constituted throwing a party. It seems impossible that all my memories of them are now the past. I want to go into the past and pull these memories with me into the future. It seems impossible that if I stop by their house these two people who I have known all my life will not be doing their normal activities. It seems impossible that they won't be there at all. That they won't be anywhere.

It feels vacant. Empty. Wrong.

They were, and now they're not. They're just not.

It makes my breath clog in my throat. I don't like it.