a passing

my grampa died today. it was neither sudden nor unexpected, but just came sooner than we had imagined. gramma was the only one with him, all other family - even my parents - being out of town. like i said, we none of us realized he was so close.

my brother, sister and i have not seen him since christmas - it was a pretty good day. he liked my gift -  a large print edition of a collection of louis lamour stories. i remember my husband telling me later that at one point grampa had gotten up from the breakfast table, overcome with emotion at seeing everyone together. us kids didn't catch it. only my husband and my father noticed what passed.

i will miss my grampa grampa. we weren't especially close, but - as with most people -  my life is caught up with his, interconnected in ways i've only begun to understand. part of me is relieved that he won't have to suffer anymore. part of me wishes i could have one more golf lesson with him. still i'm heart glad for the one i did get.

i feel oddly calm, perhaps just before the storm to come, but truly i've always been terrified of death. the idea of death. an enveloping blackness where i would cease to exist. that seems, though, to have been replaced by another imagined existence. it's the first thing that came into my head today when i heard the news.

years ago i asked a particular friend what she believed happens when we die. she said that beyond the physical death, what happens to the spirit is more like passing into an existence that we - alive and well in this one - cannot see or understand. so imagine all around you is another world, another plane, with all the folks who've gone before you living and working toward something good, enlightenment perhaps, and existing right alongside you but in tune with that something greater that we of the mortal coil have to try so hard to find.

in other words, heaven is all around you. always has been, always will be. there is comfort there, for me, in the idea of "we'll meet again," and also a thrill that the science of string theory fits so neatly into the concept of god and the afterlife.

gramma says that she is glad none of us kids saw grampa so sick and in the hospital. she is glad that we will always be able to remember him the way that we grew up with him. though it may be somewhat cowardly, i think that i am glad too.

Grampagrampa