After seeing her near the end of her road and whispering “I love you”, being alone was where I found momentary strength. Sitting surrounded by the peaceful stillness of solitude within the refuge of my room, my youthful heart vigorously pumps in order to cover the plethora of scars left behind from life’s constant bruises and burdensome aches. Blood swiftly rushes profusely through my veins like a stormy oceanic wave crashing against a giant rocky plateau only causing my heart to beat faster. Then, all of sudden it slowed, just like hers. At that very moment, I could not even muster the words to say a prayer for her. My grandmother was called home to heaven. Instantly, I became consumed with a hallowed out emptiness picking away at the inner shell of my very being. On the way to the funeral home it progressed into a mind numbing grief that weighed on my every movement. Upon arrival and prior to the minister beginning the eulogy message I thought, maybe the eye of the storm had now passed to reveal a calming smoother climate ahead. My heart was now slowly ticking like an old walloped timepiece struggling to push onward with each dull thump. I wondered if this is what the onset of death feels like. Just as I closed my eyes to welcome the escape of darkness, a faint light appeared at the end of a dreary dampened tunnel.
Immediately, I was compelled to move towards the light in order to flee from the surrounding darkness closing around me. My eyes opened suddenly to the sight of a delightful bright spring day in the company of family and friends. Each one was standing there frozen like a statue with faces covered in transparent sorrow. My heart abruptly turned into a hardened mineral mass like the cement gravestone mementos that seemingly drifted on for miles across the forged rolling hill landscape. Pulsating to the beat of a drum, this transformed callous rocklike heart of mine was now driven by the gloomy darkened shadows of death. This once vital lively euphoric rhythm had now become the genesis of an evolving grim darkness that was eroded by a piercing light shattering with repetition inside of me. The sharply jagged microscopic fragments stabbed and pierced through my skin as blood poured out from my heart in waves that were now free. At that moment, I felt the splashing of teardrops on my hand as the tranquil emotion of sorrow had broken into a full exclamation of thunderous weeping from the statues alongside of me. I lifted my arm hugging my mother closely as she sobbed in grief. I had to remain strong for her so she could lean on me.
As I closed my eyes again, I could see myself resting in solitary confinement only surrounded by the bars of unconscious darkness with memories swiftly fading away into oblivion. Without delay, I realized dreams can bring those memories back, and reliving anguish only justifies a necessity for shattered hopes. Sleep’s distant unregenerate cousin, death, will no longer become a poisonous entity of venom circulating through these veins. By cutting the crippling canoe of grief docked near my heart, I am now stronger through pain despite any inflictions that may be encountered on life’s ocean. The light I see no longer shatters inside my head, and memories of my grandma’s life are returning. Sunday dinners, summer trips to camp, the delicious pies, and even that glaring stare when I disobeyed her are now with me. You are right here in my heart as it vigorously pumps with a new excitement full of joyousness. The storm has passed so this must mean I am now free. You are with me and with the Lord. I love you Grandma, always and forever!
