somebody I love is very ill

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders and it is light as a feather. However, the shadow it casts on my eyes is long and unflinching. I’m fidgeting in the waiting room of purgatory, hoping my grandmother gets rejected and sent back to Earth. I’m afraid I will walk home empty-handed this time around.

I know I will walk home empty-handed this time around. I know the diagnosis and the symptoms are becoming more evident. The death is growing outward from her gut.

I’m not ready, but God isn’t listening. Or, maybe, I’m the one who is ignoring the message. It is almost over. Ma perché?

I haven’t learned any cinematic life lessons. No wisdom has been bestowed upon me. Everyone understands the type of pain I’m experiencing, but nobody wants to show it. I want to say I’m lost and confused, but I see it all clearly, don’t I?

I’m alone and in pain and surrounded by people that deny their own pain. It makes me feel even worse because I judge myself for falling apart even though the situation is so bleak and so sad and so predictable in the most heartbreaking way.

The Grim Reaper is driving down the parkway. He’s slow, but he’s definitely on the road right about now. I hope he takes a detour, but he won’t. I hope he loses his list and has to turn back to check with his secretary, but he’s too meticulous for such an amateur mistake.

Denial sounds really idyllic right now. I wish it were an opt-in kind of situation. The pain feels too brutal and too genuine. Is that a thing? Too genuine. I don’t like it. I want to do anything to avoid it, but I can’t think of a single thing to do. Except write this: a meaningless, rambling blog post about a meaningless day. Forgive me, but I have to call this meaningless because I want a chance to deny the gravity too. I want to pretend I don’t see the writing on the wall either. There is so much meaning in this day: in how I could hardly move or talk or eat. I don’t know the words for it though: depression sounds too clinical and heartache sounds too romanticized. There is a meaning beyond cheap words and cookie-cutter symbolism, but all I have to offer are dollar-store metaphors.

I can’t quite reach it for you or for myself. I can only point in its direction. I think that is enough as I imagine you have been here too.