Trigger Warning: The content of this article discusses death and other serious topics.
This winter break was nothing like I expected it to be. I thought I would be working a lot, taking a winter course, and spending time with friends and family as usual. Getting back to life as usual back at home. However, I was proven wrong when I was told my grandfather was in the hospital with COVID-19 this winter. Even now, as I am finally finishing writing this article, almost two months since I started it, I still don’t feel adequately equipped to write this, but I am trying.
One thought that has stayed with me throughout this experience is how I respond when someone says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I know it’s a simple question that someone would answer by telling me I have to say “thank you.” But am I really thankful? Am I really thankful that my grandfather died and I had to be in this position? I really am not. I wish I weren’t here to hear those condolences, yet I am. And there isn’t much I can do about it to change the fact. But I respond with a thank you and sink deep down back inside my mind with the lingering pain and guilt that I don’t want to have to say “thank you”; I would rather have my grandfather back.
But then, hearing “congratulations about your new baby brother” the next day was even more mind-boggling. How was it even possible to feel the excitement of the congratulations when my grandfather’s death was still fresh on my mind less than 24 hours before? I didn’t feel like I could show up for either experience properly, and that confused the life out of what my mind could handle. How could I feel the happiness of my new brother when I had felt like some part of me had died less than 24 hours prior?
A new life is a beautiful new experience, but what does one do when that memory is captivated by the loss of someone? The loss of someone who missed out on the birth of his own grandson in less than 24 hours? He needed less than 24 hours to meet his first grandson, but sadly it didn’t work out. So honestly, I can’t answer the question of how to handle that experience. I don’t know if anyone can, but recollecting what went through my mind is the best I can do.
Recap: What had happened
I had received news that my grandfather had gotten sent to the hospital. He had caught a strain of COVID-19, and within days, it became so bad so quickly that he was placed under immediate care. No one had a single thought that it would all happen this way — so quickly, either.
I eventually received a message from my father that it had gotten worse days later. He told me that there was a chance he wouldn’t make it, and he didn’t know how long he had left. From there on out, my flight was booked to go there, and the painful thought lingered in the back of my mind “what if this was it?” I remember driving home from work later that day, stopping in an empty parking lot, turning off the car, and sitting there in silence as tears eventually rolled down my face. The potential of what could have happened already burned me deeply. However, it was nothing compared to what my life would change into.
It was January 4, 2023. I had been in the airport since 2:00 a.m. that day, waiting for my early flight at 6:00. I tried getting as much sleep as I could in those uncomfortable airport seats. I had barely gotten any the days prior, so it was much needed. With much anticipation and angst, I sat on those flights hoping that time would fly by quicker than it really was, but that was the day I learned time moved at its own pace, whether I liked it or not.
My final flight had set ground at my destination minutes past 9:00 a.m. I was so happy because somehow we arrived there quicker than expected, meaning I could get to see my grandfather sooner. I rushed out of the plane and called my dad to pick me up, and he told me he would be there a good bit later than expected. I was a little confused. Usually, my dad is persistent with his timelines, but I didn’t think much of it as I got myself some food and waited for him to come by.
When he finally arrived, I was outside in the midwest cold pick-up area, watching as my dad got out of the car. Something inside of me flickered. With an outside eye, you probably wouldn’t have noticed any difference, but for me, it was like a strange case of deja vu. I had sensed this feeling before, but my thoughts didn’t have much time as my dad hugged me, picked up my bags to put them in the trunk, and said in his cracking voice, “You missed him. It’s too late.”
His heart gave out on him around the time my plane had finally landed, a few minutes past 9:00 a.m. And you know how I said it felt like deja vu? Well, my gut was spot on. Because around 10 years ago, nearly the same thing happened with my other grandpa. An unexpected visit to the hospital with my mother and I rushing to the airport to fly to Europe, only for our plane to land a few minutes past 9:00 a.m. and for us to finally make it back to my mom’s childhood home to find out he had passed away just as our plane had landed. There are more coincidences than this brief observation, but that’s a story for a different time.
The car ride to the hospital was silent. The number of feelings and thoughts I had acquired once I received the news was too many to count, yet at the same time, it seemed like there were none because they all had blurred into one another with no distinct borders leaving me with a deeply embedded hole of pain. I felt like I couldn’t move, paralyzed by my own self, yet still moving among the crowd.
I got the chance during that trip to visit the hospital not once, but twice. First, when I had arrived and then later, less than 24 hours later on January 5th, when my new baby brother was born: Mark. He came out as a healthy fully, grown newborn with no complications. He was quiet when I came to visit him for the first time, so luckily, we both could find a common ground on that as siblings because my trip to the hospital was rather quiet as well.
Soon I was greeted with congratulations from family members and friends who were there for my grandfather’s funeral. Like I said earlier, I said thank you and moved on because, truly, my mind couldn’t handle much at the moment. I was just there like a fleeting ghost, present, yet not at the same time.
Burning moments that stayed
The entire experience is a dearly painful memory, but there are two distinct key memories from this trip that stuck with me, and truly I’m still trying to understand what to do with them, but for now, they haunt my mind. However, to understand this paradoxical experience, two key memories hold significance to the story.
As the hospital returned his belongings to us at the end of our visit, none of us knew what to do with them. What do you do with belongings that don’t belong to you, but rather they belong to someone you knew that is no longer here? Do you keep them? Do you throw them out? I couldn’t tell you, but that also wasn’t my decision to make; however, I felt the weight of those thoughts as my dad pulled out his phone from the bag. It was the phone I helped him buy from Apple only what seemed to be months prior. My father slowly typed in his password and opened it up. Do you know how iPhones have a factory setting of how all the apps are placed with the standard lock screen background they provide? Well, it was just that the phone looked barely edited or changed. It was almost like it was still fresh.
As we looked through the phone, there was a lack of content on there to see. Basic photos of documents or pictures of his family. But opening up his call log and messages, now that stroke a dagger through my heart. I think we take for granted how much communication we have as a younger generation because looking through his phone logs and messages, there weren’t many calls or messages and if there were, it was just to his family, like my father, or to me days prior to when he could still speak before being intubated. Now I can’t tell you why this moment still burns me, but it does. His life was simple, and at the end of the day, all he had was his family and those closest to him. That was all he had when he died.
I had mentioned how my brain was fighting the thought of “what if this is it?” Well, some part of me hoped otherwise because when we began planning the funeral, I realized I did not bring one piece of black clothing. Not one, not even leggings. Black is a staple color in my closet. However, I didn’t bring one thing because deep down, I still believed and had hope that everything was going to be fine. However, I was proven wrong when I found myself shopping alone days later, looking for black funeral clothing in the store. I had walked around aimlessly what it felt around that store, passing by one clothing rack after the other truly with no direction. Even though my task at the store that day was simple — buy funeral clothing and buy a gift for my new baby brother — I continued to walk aimlessly through that store like a ghost.
I eventually found something to wear to the funeral. I didn’t care how it looked or if it was fashionable. It was black and warm; that was all I needed. But my next task of buying a gift for my brother was ironic in a sense. As I walked through the baby aisle trying to pick something out, and already having another younger brother who is turning five this year, I felt confident in my gift choices for my newest sibling. But as I was heading to the checkout line looked in my cart as a final confirmation that I had everything I needed. As I saw the clothing I was going to wear to commemorate the death of one life and, right next to it, the gifts I had chosen to celebrate the beginning of a new life.
Morbidly enough, I let out a small laugh at the sight of it. The irony, the paradoxical irony, that I was here today, hundreds of miles from home, buying funeral attire and baby toys. It only seemed like moments ago when I was going to work my shift as a waitress, doing my MATH 1071 homework when I came home, then ending the day off crocheting or hanging out with my friends. But now I was here instead in a big mess I couldn’t seem to get a grasp on.
What I learned
Now to sit here and confidently say that I learned everything I needed from this experience is absurd. I’m still trying to understand all of it, and there isn’t a day I don’t think about it. It seems to have taken permanent residence somewhere deep down in my soul, and I don’t know if it’s going anywhere anytime soon.
But what I do know from all of this can be tied down to one thought: Time waits for no one, and it will forever keep moving forward with or without you. Before all of this, I was a person who strived for perfection, perfection paralyzed me at times, but that’s who I was. But in reality, nothing is perfect. You can strive for what an idea of perfection is for whatever it may be, whether the best outfit or the best painting. I personally always strived for the perfect time. I searched for hopes of what would have been the perfect shining moment and opportunity before approaching anything in life. But you know that’s not what life is about.
Life isn’t perfect; if it were, the world would be a utopia, and I maybe wouldn’t be sitting here writing this. Life is made up of random, perfectly imperfect moments that all line up to make one thing your life. If you sit there waiting for the perfect time or opportunity to do something, chances are it could happen, but my experience has shown me there are much higher chances it will not. Stop waiting for life to align in the perfect way; time moves, and it never stops. You can choose to create the ideal circumstances to approach something, or you could just stop letting time go by and just show up. Show up the way you are and actually live life because I’m going to bet nine times out of ten that those you are showing up for would much rather you show up the way you are now than do so perfectly days, weeks, or months later. Because you truly never know, while you’re setting up these perfect “circumstances” and “approach,” you might just lose the opportunity to show up at all.
Life brings all kinds of things to the table: happiness, sadness, joy, misery, and love. It brings so much to us, and yet we find ways to turn it away and justify why we do. One day life can bring you great pain; the next, a new little baby brother. The unsettling truth is that life and time do not play fairly; you are not guaranteed anything, and you are not even promised a tomorrow, even if you play all your cards right. There just is. You can choose to appreciate and accept those fleeing opportunities that come or choose not to. The world keeps giving you opportunities, you lose one life, but the next day you could get a chance to try again and show up exactly the way you are now, or you may not. You get the chance to live a life that you truly want. But letting the idea of perfection plague your decisions will stop you from experiencing the true beauty that life gives us.
Time keeps moving, and it never stops, and I learned this the hard way through experiencing the death of someone close to me and the birth of someone else who will be close to me. Neither of the two have any correlation to one other, but time. So if you want something, then go get it. Show up as you are, and hope for the best. Life is truly short, and what you want to do with it is up to you. You can choose to read this and listen to me or ignore my advice. You have the power to make a move forward or back, but don’t choose to stay in one spot. Because maybe before you know it, all those times you wanted to call someone, but it didn’t seem like a good time or right, there will be a time when there is no longer an option to call or reach out, and you’ve lost the chance to even try. There is no good; there is no perfect; there is now.