Forgive The Melodrama
It’s been a rough week. Longer than that.
On November 19th, my grandmother passed away. She was almost 94 and lived a hell of a life, so don’t shed a tear. She was a lady, one of a kind and I’m honored to have known her.
I had to go home to take care of the family during the ramp up to the funeral. My mother is the baby of the family and I wanted to be there for her. She was a champ, but I think she found the whole thing easier when I came home.
Home is Northeast Indiana, by the way. That’s not just down the road from Seattle. It’s a trip.
It’s a trip that my current employer was not thrilled about. Did you know that many companies don’t give bereavement leave for extended family? Even if it’s a grandparent that you’re close with? Me either, until the morning of the 19th. It gets more complicated when one boss is fine with you taking your leave and getting shit done, and the other doesn’t want to let you get on the plane because he doesn’t want to give me the PTO. Complicated in this case means I have to bite my tongue extra hard to keep from telling said boss to fuck himself.
Regardless, I went. Eastbound on a redeye and steeling myself for a rough weekend. I landed the next morning and bought a suit. I went to the viewing and told stories and made jokes and brought relatives bottles of water and made sure they had enough tissues.
I walked into a Catholic church, after 10 years of not, and didn’t get struck by lightning. Thanks for that, G-d.
I carried the casket. Not by myself, because as tiny as my grandmother had become I’m just not that strong of a dude. I tried not to think about signing up for a gym when I helped lift the casket.
And I buried my grandmother. On my mother’s birthday.
I stayed for Thanksgiving, forsaking Twitter and Excel reports and plans and friends to be with my family for a brief amount of time. And I don’t regret it, at all.
However.
I came home to a girlfriend who found it appropriate to get super drunk and make out with a guy at a club the night I left. A girlfriend who was going to forgo telling me until after I’d taken her out to dinner. A girlfriend who never apologized, but instead told me that I should be more supportive in her time of need, that she was taken advantage of.
Comparatively, this all feels a little small.
So I sit here with Tallahassee on repeat, unable to drink, unable to vent, unable to be emotional because one of us has to not be crazy. Because we’re all full up on crazy and I don’t get a ride on that carousel.
And I’m telling my troubles to the faceless Internet like a LJ fangirl from 2002 and I absolutely hate myself for it. I suppose I should be posting deep lyrics from the album, just to fit the part.
“There are loose ends by the score / What did I come down here for?”
I haven’t talked to anyone about my grandmother’s death. I was so busy putting a brave little face on and trying to take care of everyone that I didn’t get a chance to properly grieve. I had hoped I could talk to the girlfriend about this at some point, but she hasn’t seemed interested.
And I still can’t do it. I’m all blocked up.
I’ve been blocked up for a long time.
It’s not like me at all. I’m normally Heart-On-His-Sleive kid. As you can plainly see. Maybe I’m not so much blocked up as just extremely boring. And rantastic.
And like everything I’ve written, I’m struggling for a proper ending. And in desperate need of an editor.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about the girlfriend thing. Probably not a girlfriend thing for much longer. There’s not a lot I can do about Grandma except remember her. And I’ll probably keep Tallahassee playing for at least another playthrough. This doesn’t feel so much like progress as wheel spinning, but it’ll have to do.
“We roll out the red carpet when rotten luck comes down the road.”
You can sing that again, John.
