Late night sadness

It's May of 2007. I am 24 years old and I am finally receiving my associates degree from community college. I'm excited and happy over this small victory. My parents have come out to visit me and all of my friends are out and about for the celebration. We have a week planned of all sorts of great things to do together. I'm feeling on top of the world.

Fast forward to the second to last day of my parent's visit. I am at fisherman's wharf lagging back with my father as my mother drags us through more stores than I have ever wanted to visit in one day. I'm freezing cold from the wind, and my father looks just as annoyed as me. That's when it hits... a Bomb goes off. I can't see anything, and can barely believe it is happening... Only it wasn't a bomb at all. It was the sound my heart made when my father explains to me that my grandmother is not going to get better this time, and that she has decided to stop treatments. My eyes swell with tears, but I can't let them go. Not in this public place- not in front of my mother and father. I have got to get out of here. I need to get out of here NOW!

It's the next day, and I just dropped my parents off at the airport and return the rental car. I board the F-Line from fisherman's wharf to head downtown to go to work. As I board the train my phone rings - a frantic call from my sister. she demands to know if they told me or not... Apparently she has known all along. she tells me stories of "do not resuscitate" orders that now hang from my grandmother's freezer and bed post. I hear about the stranger from hospice care who has taken up permanent residence in my grandmother's home - in the bed that i used to sleep in when I spent the night as a child. My head is spinning and my heart is racing. I can't breathe again. Tears welling up... I can't cry here. I need to Get out of here NOW! I try to calm myself with reminders that my sister is a hyperchondriac and she is probably just stoned again, but it's too late. Tears are pouring our of my eyelids and collecting in a shallow pool at the rim of my plastic sunglasses. I'm broken.

Fast forward 1 year and 8 months later. It's may of 2009. I'm sitting up in my house in Hawaii. It's 3am, and I am recalling every single memory I have of her and every detail of how I ended up here. Surprisingly there is an old blog of mine that commemorates every feeling I had through the process. A feeling of apathy has taken over my body. Laziness has held me in its firm grip for a month now. I feel ugly, and think I am visibly gaining weight. I couldn't land a summer internship because of this broken economy. I'm heading to visit my family 2 weeks to celebrate the christening of my beautiful new niece. My positivity is fading more and more by the day. I somehow started to feel something for a man who is completely wrong for me, and although I know he is wrong I can't help but wonder if I looked more like a barbie doll would he have been more interested in me? I'm not broken, but I am bruised. Right here in this very moment, all I want is a glance of her smile, and a word of encouragement. I want to feel the anticipation of going home to see her. I want to sit up for hours at the kitchen table talking and laughing with her. I want to see the excitement in her eyes when I come home for the first time in months and she knows that she is the first person I came to see.

I want to feel the acceptance of someone who, unlike my mother, honestly has my best interests in mind. I want to be able to make a decision without receiving unwelcome and unsolicited advice from someone who has never taken an interest in my life but has no problem with demanding that I live it the way she would like. I want the motivation to get out of this desk chair and do something with my day other than sleep and eat. I am fading out, and I'm worried for myself, and I don't know how to ask for help.

I have nightmares about strange things and my dreams continue to refuse to let me sleep through the night. I buy books on self fulfillment, and meditation, but I don't read them. I call to reserve a storage unit for my belongings but I don't finalize it. I think about how much school work I have to finish, but I don't do it. I'm lost and I don't know what to do. I feel complete and total loss of motivation, and I can't help but feel overcome with the sensation of loss and missing her. Sometimes, even after all this time, I still feel like I lost the only person who will ever understand and know how to speak to my soul.

My blanket doesn't smell like home anymore

Since I was a little girl, there was always a yellow blanket at my grandmother's house that I loved. She knitted it herself, and the spaces between the threads are far enough apart that the blanket might seem to be more for show than for warmth. It's thick sunshine colored threads and purposefully frayed edges, however, seem to provide the exact amount of heat needed at any time and any season. Over the years, this blanket as adorned my playpen as a baby, and served as my companion on the floor while watching television. When I finally moved away from my hometown, I would take the red eye flight home to visit, and spent hours sitting on the couch catching up with my grandmother until sleep slowly overtook me and I fell into a long deep slumber. When I would wake up, I would always find this little yellow blanket thrown over my body. It felt like home.

It's no surprise then that when my grandmother passed away a couple years ago, this was the one memento that I personally removed from her house. When I look at it, something just reminds me of home, and I forget how drastically my life has changed over the last 2 years. A little piece of me remembers that I didn't always refer to California as my "home," and that I would spend weeks in anticipation of going to New Jersey and being in the company of the one person in my life who ever truly understood me and loved me anyway. It sounds silly, but this blanket isn't just some stupid trinket like Lunis would carry around for security in the Peanuts comics, it is a piece of everything that was good about my childhood - it is the work of love from my grandmother. Until recently, Somehow this blanket has somehow retained a faint trace of the scent of her home. Maybe it was in my mind, but the smell of her house had seemed to be permanently ground into the fabric of the threads... Until Now.

I know it is obvious that after 2 years, anything can lose its original scent, but it still made me sad to realize that the traces of my grandmother have finally removed themselves from my blanket, and I guess I just miss her. My life is moving on, and so am I. My family has grown in so many ways. I have gained 3 cousins and a niece since she left my life - all of whom I love dearly. Family events don't seem as empty as they did that first Christmas without her, but every once in a while my mind takes me back to a different part of my life, and I feel ashamed for denying that it was once my world. I don't want to lose the memories I once cherished so much, or the lessons that I finally understand... Remembering my grandmother reminds me that despite everything that happened, there was beauty and happiness in my childhood. Sometimes I try so hard to shut out the bad that I block out the good as well.

I have filled my life with people who love me. I have friends who are like family in 3 states - including the one I live in now. I have learned to let these people into my heart and share with them the parts of me I once felt I could only share with my grandmother - my failures, and embarrassments as well as my hopes and my happiness. This has helped me to come to terms with her death, and taught me that everything will work itself out in the end. However, on nights like tonight, when I am scrambling to put together some sort of plan for my life - wrapped up in my little yellow blanket, I find that my heart aches to hear her voice - just for one word of encouragement to get me going, or a small breath of air that feels like home...