Grief

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Four grandparents - three of them alcoholics. One drowned before I was born, that leaves three - two alcoholics and one with no memory of her life with an alocholic, or at least no memory that we can see. Who knows really. We will keep her on life support as long as we can to avoid, at least delay, the grieving process all of us humans hate. It doesn't matter if she's miserable, as long as we don't have to let go. Today Dana, my uncle, was found dead on his boat. He too strugged his whole miserable life with being an alcoholic, in and out of mental hospitals, in and out of prison. But he didn't pretend to be happy. Everyone knew he was miserable; at least he was honest. Everyone thought Grandmother would go crazy when she found out, that her recent drinking binge would lengthen and worsten, but instead she spent the first day in weeks sober. The unthinkable. It seems I gave up praying for them on a regular basis a long time ago. I think I've begun to believe that you pray when you are moved to pray and regardless of whether you pray it once or eight hundred times, the prayer still serves its purpose. Maybe I'm just lazy, or maybe I just gave up because after many, many years it seems so futile. I have the urge to condemn myself for this, along with other things, but instead I am moved to think about the scarier things - like whether our prayers got him through the gates of Heaven, or if they didn't and he will spend the rest of his miserable existence suffering too. "Don't think about those things," some say. Isn't that exactly our problem? Let's not talk about the things that make us uncomfortable like how once it was a choice, but who frees the oppressed? Surely not themselves. And who reveals God to someone if not God Himself? I barely cried after I heard the news this morning. Instead I feel that I'm detached. I'm sure it has much more to do with other things in my life, and much less to do with Dana, but regardless I feel like I'm hovering a certain distance above everything else - not far enough away to forget, but not close enough to be a part of it all. It seems whenever someone I know dies, instead of death and parting seeming surreal, instead life and interaction seem surreal. All of the sudden all of my words seem like echoes from someone elses mouth. My chest feels a little tighter and I feel every bit of air that comes and goes, as if I hadn't been breathing for almost 26 years. I'm suddenly more aware of the little space I'm existing in, and how insignificant my problems are. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse, so I try to keep a safe distance and instead feel dangerously alone. Instead of being in the company of those who help me forget, I want to isolate myself and express these feelings in any and every way I can - I want to write about it, and submerse myself in the art that I abandoned when I made the choice to stop thinking about them. I want to say the unthinkable. Even if it is never heard. I just want to be one to say it and stop hiding, because the unthinkable exists, even with your eyes closed.

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