One year later.

Grandpa is watching me as I scoop up the dust of his body and scatter it across America. Parts of him are floating in creeks and lakes and waterfalls. Parts of him are blowing in the red desert. Parts of him are drifting between the fiery leaves of eastern Autumn. But even as his body dissipates, pouring between my fingers, we feel the entirety of him, propping us up, we feel the full weight of his absence leaning on our shoulders.

One year after his death, he appears to me in a dream, smiling mysteriously. He has a tiny plant in his hands and even though there are suspicious eyes peering at us on all sides in this shadowy underworld, I squat and dig my fingers into the soil. I dig a small hole in the earth and sprinkle a handful of his ashes in the opening. Grandpa hands me the plant, and I tuck it in, covering and patting its roots gently. It's the smallest little thing, but it feels important — he's picked the exact spot for this unassuming little plant to flourish, its tiny roots pressing through the rubble of his bones.

It's been one year, Grandpa, but your presence has yet to diminish.

For Grandpa.

Grandpa, I don’t know how to say goodbye.

It’s been nearly a year since we rolled you out of that hospital, into the dusty Mexican heat and soared back home, sweaty and uncertain. I remember the big black transparency the doctor showed us; we knew so little.

We’re all trying to look at this time as a blessing – these are the goodbyes you wish you’d said when someone is gone, but they don’t tell you how to go about interacting with someone so differently after a lifetime of habit.

You are the steady heartbeat in the center of this family – something so much a part of us that often you don’t realize how much work is being done to keep us all afloat. What do you say to your heart when it begins to falter? How can you tell it all that it has done, all that is has made possible?

I wish I were more like you, Grandpa. You always seem so certain, so strong, so true to exactly who you are. When I see old photos of you, it’s hard to imagine the other chapters of your life. To me it seems you have always been a big bearded man with wild hair and a mischievous grin, a laugh carried through cigar-scented smoke. No matter how big we’ve all grown, you have never grown any smaller by comparison.

I remember when we were driving back from the airport after we retuned from Mexico – everyone was so anxious to hear from you, and someone handed you the phone to say hi to Candace, I think. You spoke briefly and then said, “I love you,” handed the phone back, and asked, “Who was that?” And we laughed but you just shrugged and said, “I knew it was family, I love all of my family.” That’s exactly who you are to me.

It’s so hard to say goodbye, to find all the important things to say before our time is up, but I know you know the most important thing; that I love you. I think our relationship has always been largely non-verbal, it’s never been a complicated thing. It’s just as simple as love.

My first memories of you don’t even fit into a story, I just remember being in the old house on Brockhurst, and a feeling like a bubbling over of laughter, the kind that comes out of a child in a gleeful scream when they’re about to be tickled.

I don’t really know what you believe, or even what I believe, but I feel certain that you will be okay. I hope you are filled with that feeling of overflowing laughter; that you dissolve into it. I hope you get to see us, and that the next chapter is as adventure filled as this one. I hope you get to bring all this love with you.

Tressa

Grandma.

Grandpa is snoring with a blanket over his head.

“He’s in Hawaii,” Grandma tells us.

Lately he’s been going places that his body will never again reach. This afternoon we visited with his sisters and he told them in his low, quavering voice that he would be going golfing tomorrow. When he needs to be taken to the bathroom, to be hauled and shoved and cleaned and undressed and dressed, he goes to Hawaii, again.

Grandma sits back on the couch as we talk about the strange balancing act her life has become. We talk about death with dry eyes, it’s such a commonplace topic these days, now that Grandpa has begun to hear things that no one else hears, see things that are not visible to anyone else.

“In the hospice booklet they say illusions,” Grandma says, “I say illusions my ass, but to each their own.”

Last week, when Mom, Sis and Grandma took Grandpa on what may very well have been his last trip, he told Mom to go back into the hallway to see a painting that looked like me, but it wasn’t there.

Now, Grandma sits back on the couch and looks very tired.

“When people ask, you know, what I’m going to do when he passes,” she says, thoughtful, “I think I’d just like to rent a room somewhere…and just sleep for a week.” She shakes her head a little. “It sounds funny, but that’s what I’d like to do. No cell phones, nothing, just sleep for a long time.”

photo credit: natron dreaming via photopin cc