One does not understand

       One does not understand, fully, what death is until one has felt it. Yes, from a young age we “know” what death is, but we do not know death. At least, hopefully we don’t. I was largely…not academic per se, but…theoretical. I knew people all over the world were dying all the time from this and that and that this was very sad but true. I knew it, but I didn’t feel it. And that’s what really matters. It’s how it feels, how the lose hits you slowly over and over again like waves crushing you against the rocks. The world is not the same as it was and it never can be again because a person you knew, a person you cared about is no longer in it. It hurts. You hurt.
       At first it’s like it’s not even really happened. You know the person isn’t alive anymore, but it’s not there. The knowledge isn’t enough, but latter, after the shock and disbelief wears off…it is there. And they are not. They aren’t there anymore and you know that you will never see them again for the rest of your life. You can’t understand it even though you thought you understood what the word “death” meant. It’s just doesn’t feel true that this person isn’t in the next room, that you can’t talk to them anymore. There’s a hole in your heart that they filled, and you never knew how big a piece of it they were until they weren’t there to fill it.
     Feelings are weird. Being human is…weird. It’s complicated and hard and you never really get it. And you don’t get that you don’t get it until you get how complicated and hard it is. Feelings are what matters, and I don’t know why. How you feel about a thing or a person is what defines them to you nearly always. And it’s those feelings that make you hurt. I wish…

     It hurts…nearly a year later it still hurts. I lost my grandmother, an old woman who was silly and kind and always gave me ten dollars more on my birthday than my grandfather. I don’t know if she did so on purpose, and I will never know because she’s dead. She’s dead and I love her and I will never see her again.
Yeah, that’s what this is about. The hurt.
      And, as much as I know it pains me, my brother, and my sister, I know my mom feels it tenfold. We lost our grandmother, she lost her mother. I can’t even imagine.
      My mother is so…so strong, as all people imagine their mothers to be, and yet I’ve seen her cry, like a baby. She’s my mother, she should not feel like this. She’s supposed to protect me from feelings like this.
      But she’s human too. And that’s one of the hardest lessons we have to learn. My mother lost her mom, and she’s hurting far, far more than I am. I love them both so much, mother and daughter. And I know that it won’t be Ok. It won’t ever be ok ever again, for either of us. But we do what we must. She goes on, and I go on, and she continues to be my mother even though she is forever hurting because she can’t do the same.
`       I love her, and that’s all I can do.