A Farewell in three parts. Part one; Wish You Were Here.

[bueeyedbookworm]

It is a week before Christmas. I have been awake all night, a habit long set, with a familiar curl of unease beneath my breastbone and an interminable restlessness that pops up about once a month. It is around nine am. YouTube is playing through a mix, and i have just painted my nails. I am sleep deprived, eyes red and tired in the winter suns glare. My wife coughs, half asleep, and rolls over.

My phone rings.
My grandmother had passed away in the early hours, from complications caused by her fall and subsequent stroke. It feels...odd, to put that so plainly. Like i should say more; maybe the way my fathers voice cracked as he told me, or how i didn't start crying until after i had hung up. How it feels like part of me has been hollowed out, a gap beneath my ribs, as if love is a physical part of us that disappears when they do. Love doesn't work like that, at least not for me, not really. It's not gone, just different. Now it's nostalgia, memories, photographs and birthday cards and heirlooms. It's when I see her in the shape of my eye, or the line of my jaw.

Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd starts playing.

I break- or perhaps shatter, I'm not sure – in my wife's arms, curled up on the bed with her. My nails smudge on the duvet cover. She rocks me, and strokes my hair while i keen out that first rush of grief, all-encompassing and violent. When i am done, she bundles me up in a blanket on the sofa, makes me a cuppa, and brings me a roll of tissue. I message my mum. I message my sister. My mum has the Baby while my brother-in-law handles my sister. I am briefly glad she has someone like him with her.

I hunt for something to listen to as background noise.
I play 'Wish You Were Here' again.

My niece is, at this point, just over six weeks old, and has had the ignominious accolade of causing her first inter-family fight before she can even hold her own head up. I had posted a photo of me and her, snuggled on he couch while my sister, sleep deprived and overwhelmed, has a half hour to herself to shower and feel human. My cousin, feeling that i shouldn't even dare to feel some kind of happiness while my grandmother lies in a hospital bed, comatose and dying, lashes out. She is closer, after all. Has to see our grandmother hooked up to machines and tubes. I am two-hundred miles away, and an easy target. The picture is an excuse, a way to make herself feel better in a horrific situation. I ignore the comment after pointing out my niece makes the waiting bearable.

We have not spoken since, not even at the funeral. Maybe my lack of angry reaction was an affront. I don't know. I do know that i don't owe anyone, not even my cousin, a public performance of grief. It is mine, private, to be felt and turned over in my mind, to be drawn and journaled and written about. To be discussed with those I'm close to, those I've leaned on before.

My grandmother had four children, eleven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren. She liked collecting statuettes of pretty ladies in historical clothes, dogs, fish, collectable tea pots and flowery jewellery. I'll always remember the first time she laughed at one of my puns, and how she never judged me for my appearance or personality. How she loved watching me draw, supported all of us in our passions. How she greeted my wife the same way she greeted all of our partners. How she was worried she'd let the cat out of the bag after my sister conceived when i misheard her and implied i didn't know my sister was pregnant. Her besotted expression when she visited, and saw my six-year-old nephew in person for the first time since he was a baby.
I wish I'd gotten the recipe for her garlic mustard chicken. I wish I'd gotten to visit her more than once with my wife. I wish she'd gotten to see her newest great-granddaughter for the first time.
I wish we'd had more time.
I wish she was here.