The Glitch

I used to have an incredible memory -- I could recite conversations verbatim.

Maybe age or stress or both have dulled my memory. Nonetheless, there are certain things my brain always refuses to remember. Or maybe it's just a glitch.

I'll see something and think, "Oh. Grandmom would like this. I should call Grandmom; it's been a while. I'd love to see Grandmom -- maybe this weekend."

I would love to see Grandmom. The problem is that she died in 2005. Maybe 2004. (glllitch) I saw her the evening she died, and I had no idea that the next day my father would call me at work to tell me she was dead. I planned to visit her after work. I told her I would. I didn't know she was a DNR. God, that's so fucking clinical, but that's what we call people who do not want extraordinary means used to prolong their lives. A DNR has had enough.

Would anything have changed if I had known she was a DNR? I think so. I think I would have stayed with her that night. I was so fucking clueless. So clueless. So clueless.

People experience grief differently, their expressions of grief are even more varied. Can you how grief has cut their skin? Can you smell grief in their sweat? Do they weep, scream, run, shutdown? Business as usual? It's unusual business if you haven't experienced profound inexplicable loss, loss for no reason, just being lost.

I've been glitching all day. I forget the cats are gone. I forget that they won't come running when I go outside. They won't call me when they hear my voice inside the house. I forget that they don't need food or fresh water anymore.

My grandmother was very ill. Before she was ill, she was ready to die. I'd known for a very long time. 

She believed she was going to heaven. 

She was lucid. 

She was in extreme emotional pain. 

Her life was so incredibly hard. 

She loved deeply.

I've heard that she was a mean, nasty person to some, and I don't doubt the veracity of that claim. But she was never mean to me. She loved me more than anyone else did. She loved me. I never doubted it. She loved me. She loved me. I've never felt secure in other attestations of love, but I never doubted hers. Most are protestations, but she loved me. She loved me.

And it was time for her to die.

I'm trying to read. It's light -- it's Terry Gross's All I Did Was Ask. It's not bad. The interviews are good (of course), and they're short.

I finished the one with Johnny Cash, and I put the book down and rolled on my side, and I glitched. And then I thought about going to the shelter to visit my cats or breaking them out. Putting all three in two carriers and fleeing on a bus, a train and another train like I did during Hurricane Irene. But I don't have any money. So. Hitchhiking. Yes. Hitchhiking 

with three cats.

Just like I never doubted that my grandmother loved me, I never doubted that these animals loved me. I never doubted it. I never doubted it. I never doubted it.

And they weren't sick. And they weren't ready to die. And I put them in the carriers, and I sent them away.