I remembered that I lost you.

I'm at my most emotionally vulnerable on airplanes, it seems. I fly a lot, although it unfailingly scares me, because the thought of never seeing as much of the world as I can, which is pretty much all of it, scares me more. I have pretty significant crash paranoia and I'm just about the most satisfied when I land and get in the car that's statistically much more likely to kill me. Our brains are funny.

On the plane home from SXSW Interactive in Austin last week, I sat down in my usual aisle seat, close to the front, next to two jackass guys who had been at the conference too, talking about their iPhones and inappropriate texting with girls named Ashley while married, and pointedly ignoring me. I was exhausted.

I had spent five days in a bubble of weird, frenetic activity, learning a lot and seeing and hearing some very interesting things, but not for a minute of it feeling cool enough, or connected enough, or where-I-wanted-to-be-in-the-world enough. I struggled to focus, to repeatedly answer the "what do you you do?" question with some kind of solidity that stayed elusive.

I had been surrounded by nice people (who actually in a few amazing cases gave quite of a bit of a damn about me, as it turned out, and were very kind and generous.) and great ideas and good food and also a lot of bullshit, quite frankly. A lot of chatter. A lot of social and status whatever. Oh and I also broke my computer and my camera was long-dead, and as it turned out I still loved Shiner Bock and barbecue and was utterly hungover from both.

When I sank into my seat, I opened up my notebook to get some of the stuff out of my head, because time trapped on a plane is often some of the best for purging my brain. The notebook is the daily calendar/Moleskine variety, and I had marked January 2nd with a prayer card for that lady holding me in that baptism picture up there (that is imprinted on my heart such that I can see it when I close my eyes,) who died on that day this year. The card fell out on my lap. I picked it up, noted the date and was oddly shocked that it had only been two months and some change, mostly because I don't like to think of her as gone and never will and it's better if I don't think of the time that's passed since in such concrete terms.

Trapped on that plane, I left my sunglasses on and cried as inconspicuously as possible. I wrote some things down about her. I remembered for the countless time since she had her stroke 12 years ago how much this loss sucked.  In spite of my pretty serious grounding in reality, I believed it ought to never happen, that I didn't want a life without her somewhere in it, so basically I intended to skip over the whole mortality concept when it came to this person who was in and of herself so much of my backstory, who frequently gave me uncommon amounts of resolve when my own so dependably shattered, who at her frailest and weakest only gave a shit about how I was doing, who never, ever let me down. I thought about how I could explain where I'd been and what I'd been doing in Texas to her if I had the chance and how she wouldn't have understood it at all but would have only wished aloud that it was a good experience for me, and it must have been if I'd chosen to spend my time there, and that I likely was working too hard again, and where the hell had I gone again anyway?

I missed her again like knives through my chest and I realized that still, no matter how much I run, no matter how much I try awkwardly to get through this phase to the next, no matter how much I dress myself up and take myself out, at my core I am a 5 year old who wants the dog and the grandma back that the last year took away. (And were I not on an honesty kick I'd have erased that already but that's the way things are right now, and the way the writing may go for awhile too, to see if it will help.) And since neither of them are going to show back up anytime soon all I can do is keep moving through what is still a weird and unpredictable river of grief that I can't believe I had the audacity to think might be more manageable this time around, until I get to a more peaceful place that "she's in a better place" has never provided for me.

Death sucks. I hate it. And good grandmas, as I was lucky for a good number of years to learn firsthand, are magic.

Comments

[Mona]

Here's to good grandmas. Beautiful writing as always Laurie, loved it.