No Blog Entry Today!

I'd like to write a blog entry about my grandfather dying and about what that means to me and my family.  I'd like to throw in the mortifying pieces of humor:  Andy thumping on his chest and crumbling cookies into his casket, the comically morose demeanor of the funeral director as he grew angrier and angrier with all of the children (and their toys), and how Andy kept asking why dying means you have no legs (as you can't see the lower half of the body in the casket).   Ideally, in this blog entry, I might tell you how we explained death to Andy- the hodge podge of narratives, including people getting very old and sick, souls flying up like angels to be with God in Heaven, a person passing away simply because they are done with their work on this Earth.  Did Andy understand all this?  Yes, I think so.  Because now he wants to know if Mommy will die one day.  And he wants to know if I'm sad that my grandpa is dead.  And he has listed all of the people that he would be okay with dying.  And I'm glad it's been almost a week now, because the topic is seemingly no longer fresh in Andy's mind, and he's moved on to other interests, such as calligraphy.  Except without all the calligraphy.

The truth is that it's hard to write about all of this, because I am not sad that my grandfather is gone.  I feel absolutely nothing.  He was sick for a long time and largely absent from my life.  What I am sad about is that we weren't closer and that my mother didn't have a better relationship with him.  And I am sad that my grandmother is left alone.  But I am numb to the actual loss, and I cannot pretend that I am not.

So it turns out that I do not have a blog entry today after all.  I tried.  What I do have is that overwhelming urge to love my children as hard as I can, raise them to be good people, and keep them surrounded by family- to give them that feeling of extended belonging that eluded my mother and eventually me.