So, I think our brains have a way of creating moments that, out of context, seem cruel and heartless. But the thing I think we often forget in a moment of pain is that the brain doesn't live without the heart.
My grandpa died about seven years ago. Wild Turkey had been a very close friend to him, years of hard physical labor, and a marriage to a woman who could never love him as much as he loved her had taken a great toll on him.
He was a brash, offensive and horrible man. But he also was a loving, humorous and secretly tender man. He was the man who referred to the political party opposing his own views as "Nazis." But he also was the man who, near the end of his life, remembered that my grandma had once mentioned wanting a metal detector, and just a few days before Christmas (always last minute) would make the call to me to fetch one for her. Years of self-destructive overindulgence in food and alcohol, combined with the toll hard physical labor takes on your body, had left him pretty much home-bound. So, he relied on me a lot. Three hours away, I was one of the few people he could rely on, with the exception of the "friend" who continued to sneak him whiskey. I wish that "friend" had been far less reliable.
In the days that followed my grandpa's death, I couldn't help the feeling that he had deserved so much better. He deserved to be loved as much as he loved. He deserved not to feel as much physical and emotional pain as he suffered for so many of his final years. I worried that maybe, just maybe, he had deliberately increased his "secret" alcohol intake near the end, knowing that there would be no one to question whether his passing was completely "natural" or not.
In my heart, no matter what really happened, his death was anything but natural. There is nothing natural about losing someone you love, especially someone you love whom you know no one else loves in the same way you love them. I was embarrassed by him. He was so racist, so offensive and just generally unpleasant to so many. But, in the last years of his life, I listened to him. I got to know the person he was and why he did the things I found so abhorrent and annoying. And somehow, I came to love him for those things too.
When he died, my grandma wanted to cremate him. I was horrified. He and I had never spoken of his desires, and maybe he really didn't care, but when I considered what I knew of him, I protested. My grandpa had adored his parents, almost as much as his wife. They were good Catholics--something my grandpa certainly was not, and probably even disdained. But he loved them so much, I felt sure that he would want to be buried and given a proper send off. In a way, and without hurtful intent, I found myself planning that send off, and basically dragging my grandma along.
In retrospect, I think it's just as likely that he wouldn't have cared, but I did. I cared so much that I steeled myself to remember that he was not a good Catholic and that God, whatever that is, had little if any place in his life, and I spoke at his funeral instead of some preacher he had never met. I took the opportunity to illustrate the negatives about him, as well as the positives, and especially to communicate in very certain words the way in which I felt he had been misunderstood and under-appreciated by others. I explained that in the last years of his life, his body had become a prison--a constant source of frustration and pain he couldn't escape. Maybe it was wrong, but it felt good to stand up for him, since as brash and horrible as he was, he never stood up for himself.
I took his last years, and his passing as a personal affront. I wished I had done more for him. I ached for how much he had hurt. Feelings that are still hard to let go of and think about so many years later.
A few weeks after he died, I had a dream about him. I was in an unfamiliar setting--some kind of apartment. It was streamed with crazy sunlight and he came to my door. He wouldn't come in, and he wouldn't say anything to me, but simply stood at the door with an enormous smile on his face, waving at me. And then, he was gone.
After that, the pain started to slowly slip away. I don't really remember when it stopped. I just know that some time passed and I didn't feel the need to cry everyday and I stopped boiling over with the anger I had for everyone who had mistreated and abandoned him.
This morning, I had a dream about our Blue. Throughout his life, Blue was a nervous Nellie--always quick to upset, a barker, a whiner and a dog who demanded attention. He seemed to be able to tell time, and in the last few years, all of those life-long traits had intensified. Those things had been almost endearing when he was young, but as he seemed to be more restless, more difficult to pacify and more relentless in his neediness--for what I could almost never tell--those traits were a drain. In losing him, we have gained the guilt of how easy just "being" has become.
In the time after losing someone, our brain is overtaken by our heart. It begins to paint pictures of the person--or dog--we have lost and it turns them into a heroic and shining version of who they were, that they never could have lived up to in real life.
For days, I haven't been able to see "old Blue," just the younger version that was always truckin' around the house, panting and alerting me to the fact he wanted a treat.
In my dream about him this morning, I found myself in a place that I had never been before, but there were a million familiar things all around. I found myself talking about how much I missed Blue and how terrible it was to lose him with a mother I will never care about in the way I once did, and a man who I will never be able to relate to as I once did. My sister was an infant, crawling around on the wretchedly thick, green plush carpet from the first house my parents owned. Long lost toys and objects from my past were gathered in corners, including my Goofy slipper with the blow-out and my "Magical Musical Thing." I lie down on that soft, ugly carpet, and young Blue jumped into my arms and licked my face. I laughed and played with him until I woke up and all of it was gone. And he is gone.
In the same way my brain found a way to break through to my heart and let me know that my grandpa was going to be all right, my brain found a way to tell my heart that young Blue was a place I would never see again, and that he had really been gone for quite a while. It was okay to stop painting the picture--the one I couldn't stop seeing. It was okay to see him how he really was.
Day to day life hadn't let me start grieving for Blue when we really started to lose him. It's only now that I can't continue to try and make him the Blue I had been missing, that I grasp he was already gone.
My Body is a Cage--The Arcade Fire
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