Monday Mini post-My parents are orphans now

My parents are orphans now. It's weird knowing you don't have grandparents anymore. Like a link to a life before you existed ha been erased. The reminder that your folks once didn't have it altogether and that they smoked and played around and were not always the first in class, as they like to proclaim is gone. It's a real bummer. Freakin Mondays!!

Monday mornings are universally loathed. It’s ubiquitous and well documented. Even when you wake up feeling good, just knowing that it’s Monday, you almost feel obliged to feel bad even if you've got nothing to feel bad about. Well, I woke up feeling kind of shitty but just because I’m currently anxious about a conversation I need to have.

I got up and started to haggle with myself to hit the P90X and on the way there, I meet my cousin in the hall way and he promptly delivers the news. “Kaka is dead. She passed away at about 3. am this morning. Dad is in Fort Portal now. “

I looked within myself to feel something. All I could see in my mind was the last time I saw her. She was in terrible pain. I felt relieved. I feel relieved for my father.

She was a beautiful woman. Not in the way people say their mothers are beautiful by default, I mean she was a looker. In her day she was fine!!In the twilight of her time on earth, she had become so much smaller in stature than I recall her being as a kid. She had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. They just seemed to be a child’s eyes, even in her late eighties, they just looked curious and playful and wise all at the same time. Like an oasis in a desert, they stood out on her time worn face.

We never spoke much because of the language limitations, but she was always happy to see her grandson and always tried to sit up and listen even when we didn't get each other, we knew we liked each other. How my grandfather who was basically Severus Snape from Harry Potter but in a bad mood had managed to get her is beyond me.

To have seen her writhe in pain just by standing up was beyond sad to see. Seeing her go from the strong woman that worked her garden for over half a decade to being bed ridden was something my father constantly said was terrible to watch. She was in pain more and more and it caused her to be in fear too. Hallucinating and trembling. The dignity she wore on her grey crown was being eaten away.

Now she’s gone and I suppose as with any death, there are the words we never said to each other, the moments we could have squeezed out of this momentary existence on this little blue planet together that make it somber. It’s a gnawing realization that the chapter is closed. I’m the poorer for losing her. I am glad at least she liked her grand children.

So that’s it, no more grandparents. They’re all gone. The people that made my parents sheepish and the people that I have vague memories of being overjoyed at the littlest of achievements. Things my parents over looked, they over emphasized. Being that my family is not exactly touchy feely, they were the ones that embraced us(grand-kids), and taught us the bible and gave us money every time they came to town and complained that we were too thin.

I’m going to miss you Kaka. Perhaps if I believed that one day I would see you again, it would be of some comfort. But I know that you gave me what you had to give- love.  Unconditional and caring. And those eyes that lit up every time you saw me. I suppose you , more than anything, showed me what love looks like when it stares you in the face. Thank you..Rest in peace, Kaka.