Hello again!
So eight years ago today my grandpa Jim passed away. Every year we take a moment to remember him. My grandma asked me this morning when I woke up and was sitting with her in the living room if I knew what day it was. I played stupid because I didn’t want to say anything at first. To me it’s still a sore spot, but every year she asks me the same question. I should be used to it by now right? So she said that its been eight years since gramps passed away and I said I know. We shared a sad smile.
So why oh why am I sitting here at this hour writing this entry? Because I can that’s why! No but seriously I have been thinking about him all day, I’ve tried to avoid all the stupid songs on my ipod that remind me of him but of course shuffle is Satan.
I miss him, plain and simple. He was such a fun person! People might be wondering why it’s such a big deal, why one grandparent passing away is affecting that person so much. Well if you know me well know you know that my grandparents raised me and my two brothers for most of our lives. We’ve only really ever known them as adult figures, even though we had our parents. We spent so much time with them that they became our parents in a sense. Losing gramps was one of the worst things to ever happen in my life. I didn’t even realize that I had hit rock bottom until someone pointed it out. I’d gone so far off the deep end and I was clueless to it. As a freshman I had gone from this bubbly shy girl to someone I couldn’t even recognize. His death had changed me completely.
Enough of that for now.
I want to keep him alive as long as I am. I still feel like he’s out there somewhere maybe getting another chance at life or just watching over us, because thinking anything else breaks my heart. As much as I avoid faith that’s all I really have to help with make it through the passing years.
I would go into that night, but I don’t feel that we need to travel back down that particular road anymore. I know what happened as well as everyone else who was there.
As for the man named James Whippie, my grandpa, you have to know this…he was amazing. You could only wish to know someone as hilarious, random and just great. I remember this one time when I was ten maybe, I had started getting into drawing and my gramps took my sketchbook and said for me to sit by the tv while he drew something. I thought that it was me that he was gonna sketch, turns out he drew the thumb he was holding up. He could draw like nobody’s business. There was these times when he’d bust out in German randomly, only everything he said were dirty sentences or words. The man could cook.
I remember every year on Christmas he’d get chocolate covered cherries and when everyone would go to sleep we’d stay up and eat them at midnight while watching Star Trek.
When he died my routine also died. I don’t know if anyone knows this about me or not but I like things in order, I like my little routines to go as they are supposed to. Every night before I went to sleep I’d give him a big hug and a peck on the cheek and the same thing in the mornings when I got up. I couldn’t do that anymore, I couldn’t tell him how much I loved him and how much he meant to me because he was gone forever. So during that whole year eight years ago I’d pretend he was there and tell him anything and everything on my mind. How much we all missed him.
That whole year and the next I had dreams of him every single night, some good some about his death. The bad ones always left me tossing and turning and I couldn’t sleep some nights. Those were really bad times. But I slowly got better up until now. I sometimes wonder what life would be like now if he were still here. I know playing the ‘what if’ game is only self-destructive but it’s hard to avoid at times.
I remember when I was five and he was still a truck driver on the road and I believed in God, I would ask him to please protect my grandpa and bring him back home to me. I can’t ask God that anymore because he can’t come back.
When I would dream of him, the good ones, it felt real, like he was here still but I would wake up and the reality would hit me.
I’m sure my family knows how that is, right?
I don’t know why I decided to write this but it just seemed like the best idea, getting things off my chest.
I think that’s all I need to write for now.
-Panda
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