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unforthIt's funny how useful and calming composing my thoughts for an LJ post can be.
Today, this morning, my grandfather's oldest friend Arthur died. They've known each other since they were teenagers - at least 70 years. It wasn't unexpected. Arthur's been in the ICU since before Christmas, and was really only alive even now because he hadn't signed a DNR. However, we still didn't know when, so I'm still a little shocked even though I knew it was coming.
What I'm having trouble figuring out is whether or not I'm genuinely upset about this beyond my concern for my grandfather. From my point of view, Arthur has always been around. He was estranged, badly, from his own family, and as a result he spent pretty much every holiday while I was growing up with us. One of the last times I saw him, three or four years ago at least, we had this huge fight (family scale) between my mom and him, in which he argued that he knew better than her about high school drop outs - a ludicrous suggestion, given that all of mom's early grants pertained to drop out prevention and she knows tons about it. This rather completed the already progressing souring of my opinion of Arthur, such that I decided he was a pompous outdated know it all stick in the mud. So I shouldn't be upset, right?
Yet for some reason, right now, that memory is fighting a battle with a much older memory, one where I was about 12, and Arthur laughingly allowed me to extort 20 bucks from him for the return of the afikomen, even though he knew Poppop had already paid me. And when I remember that, when I remember that he was at times a perfectly sweet man, a good friend to my grandfather, a proxy great uncle to me, a face at all of our holiday tables - especially Thanksgiving and Passover - well, I fell very sad. I don't think that I miss him, because now that I'm an adult all the flaws are too obvious - even my grandfather thinks he's really flawed - so I can't figure out what, exactly, I'm mourning for. Yet I am mourning - now that I'm writing this I'm certain that it's more than a simple matter of "I think I aughta be sad, so I'll make sure I'm sad," which is what I thought it might be at first.
Maybe I shouldn't worry about it too much yet, though. I've only known for an hour. Soon enough, it'll be like when my dad's dad died, though I actually knew him even less then Arthur - I'll grieve for a few hours and then move on. Yet it is the strangest feeling of watching the older generation leave one by one, and I think I'm really beginning to realize, for the first time, that Poppop is the only one left, pretty much, and he's almost 90 - it feels like I have so little time left with him. (oh yeah, that's the heart of it, that's what I'm actually upset about. Good to know. :) )
And yet, life goes on. Until it doesn't, I guess. Funny how that works.
Today, this morning, my grandfather's oldest friend Arthur died. They've known each other since they were teenagers - at least 70 years. It wasn't unexpected. Arthur's been in the ICU since before Christmas, and was really only alive even now because he hadn't signed a DNR. However, we still didn't know when, so I'm still a little shocked even though I knew it was coming.
What I'm having trouble figuring out is whether or not I'm genuinely upset about this beyond my concern for my grandfather. From my point of view, Arthur has always been around. He was estranged, badly, from his own family, and as a result he spent pretty much every holiday while I was growing up with us. One of the last times I saw him, three or four years ago at least, we had this huge fight (family scale) between my mom and him, in which he argued that he knew better than her about high school drop outs - a ludicrous suggestion, given that all of mom's early grants pertained to drop out prevention and she knows tons about it. This rather completed the already progressing souring of my opinion of Arthur, such that I decided he was a pompous outdated know it all stick in the mud. So I shouldn't be upset, right?
Yet for some reason, right now, that memory is fighting a battle with a much older memory, one where I was about 12, and Arthur laughingly allowed me to extort 20 bucks from him for the return of the afikomen, even though he knew Poppop had already paid me. And when I remember that, when I remember that he was at times a perfectly sweet man, a good friend to my grandfather, a proxy great uncle to me, a face at all of our holiday tables - especially Thanksgiving and Passover - well, I fell very sad. I don't think that I miss him, because now that I'm an adult all the flaws are too obvious - even my grandfather thinks he's really flawed - so I can't figure out what, exactly, I'm mourning for. Yet I am mourning - now that I'm writing this I'm certain that it's more than a simple matter of "I think I aughta be sad, so I'll make sure I'm sad," which is what I thought it might be at first.
Maybe I shouldn't worry about it too much yet, though. I've only known for an hour. Soon enough, it'll be like when my dad's dad died, though I actually knew him even less then Arthur - I'll grieve for a few hours and then move on. Yet it is the strangest feeling of watching the older generation leave one by one, and I think I'm really beginning to realize, for the first time, that Poppop is the only one left, pretty much, and he's almost 90 - it feels like I have so little time left with him. (oh yeah, that's the heart of it, that's what I'm actually upset about. Good to know. :) )
And yet, life goes on. Until it doesn't, I guess. Funny how that works.
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Date: 2007-12-30 09:37 pm (UTC)*huggles*
-- Gerardo
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Date: 2007-12-30 11:09 pm (UTC)More hugs, and hope you get everything sorted out...
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Date: 2007-12-31 01:06 am (UTC)