I have so much on my mind, yet so little understand as to which keys to use first. It's a gross understatement to tell you that I have been meaning to post but running low on time. And starting Tuesday, the first day of the swim season, I will officially have lost about 15 more hours per week. So here's to the last post for, who knows, maybe a week, maybe two months.
The last time I wrote, September 26, was exactly a week and four days before my grandfather passed away. I like to think that October 7th was only his official passing, and that he had been gone for a while before that, that October 7th was finally the day he bowed out stubbornly to his malignant brain tumor. While those of you who did not know him may think calling him stubborn was an insult, it is not at all. He was a fighter, in multiple senses of the word, dying as a two star Admiral, a widow, a father to five, a widow of 15 years, and the husband of a smoker and alcoholic, the only complaint I heard leave his mouth being about his hip pain two years ago.
I will certainly miss him, as I already do, but I am acutely aware of the beauty and sheer blessing of knowing him for fifteen years. The song in the title is a good one, one that definitely expresses so many emotions in no defined lyrics, but instead the lyrics being the thoughts that occupy your mind as you listen. My fingers are prosed above these keys, unsure of the words necessary to capture what I am trying to vocalize. Listen to 3:17 until around 6. There are few feelings not explored in this measure of time. It reminds me extremely much of my grandfather's death, explosions of intensity and uncertainty of what is to follow, an absolute silence then resuming with such tranquility. I swear, I have never seen more random people at a funeral than his. I have attended my share of family funerals but not one had audiences of random passers-by who had been just strongly affected and inspired by the deceased except for my grandfather's. I chose to believe that the truth about his death is rather simple, like those 2 minutes and 43 seconds of the song. While there is such pain and a striking reality left in the open like shattered glass, one never able to be fixed, it will eventually subside, be swept away, and a period of serenity, a beautifully broken serenity will remain in the space of the once shattered glass.
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