A Year Goes By...

I wanted to write yesterday but I couldn't find the words. I wanted to sing yesterday but I couldn't hear the music. I wanted to dance yesterday but I couldn't wear the shoes.

So much goes on in a year. People move. Babies are born. Holidays memories are made. Vacations here and there. Through all of this, we grow and we heal from past hurts. Yesterday, I was hurting... even though I had healed a great deal in the past year, I was still hurting.

It's been a year since my grandfather passed away. A whole year. It seems like it was just yesterday that my sister, nephew, and I were driving home from her work conference. It seems like it was just yesterday that my mom went to the neurologist with my grandparents to get the diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. But that isn't the diagnosis they got. What started out as a pretty good day, turned extremely sad and scary at the same time. That was November 3.

The doctors kept saying they were sorry. There wasn't much they could do. You'll have him for Thanksgiving, but never by Christmas. That's what they kept saying. And they were right. We celebrated my grandmother's birthday on the 19th, and then Thanksgiving on the 24th. We spent every day with my grandfather... at least for a little while. We listened to him. We sat with him. We watched him sleep.

The day he passed was a Sunday and we were there with him. My sister and I helped our Aunt Pat give him a bath that morning. He just didn't look like himself. Aunt Pat kept saying he wouldn't want to be there like that. So we helped with his bath and then Larea cut his hair and I shaved him. By the time we were finished this morning, he looked like my Poppa again.

I still see his face and hear his breathing. I remember that last breath like it were my own. The release of life is so sweet and yet so heartbreaking at the same time. I knew the moment he passed. I knew the exact moment he was gone. My sister did... and my father did, too. We all felt it inside of us. It was like a weight lifting off of us because we knew he was home.

Not one day goes by that my thoughts do not drift to him. I'm healing though. Slowly... I am healing. Another year will go by before I know it and I will be faced with the same sadness that I am facing now. But it will get better. They say "This too shall pass." I believe that. The pain and the hurt will pass, but the love and the memories will last forever.