Half

My grandfather would've loved Friday.  He would've loved that people wrote about him in the paper.  He would've loved that the flags in Baton Rouge were put at half-mast for him.  He would've loved that hundreds of people lined up down the aisle, around the church, and out the door that afternoon to see him one last time and pay their respects.  He would've loved having all of his family there.  The music, the readings, the stories his sons told, the poems and prayers they read, the memories people shared, the delicious food at the reception: he would've loved it all.

And yet, a wife grieved her husband that day.  Children grieved their father.  I said goodbye to a man that I have loved and respected and looked up to all of my life.

1st very young cousin [stacking brownies on her plate]:
I saw you crying in church.

Me:
I was.  I was sad.

2nd very young cousin [looks up at me]:
Why were you crying?

1st very young cousin [matter-of-factly before returning to her brownie stack]:
Because Papa died.



When I was in middle school, I read a book called A Summer to Die, in which a girl loses her sister suddenly to leukemia.  I have a distinct memory of finishing the book, walking down to the living room, and sitting down on the floor next to my mother, where I sobbed into her shoulder for what felt like hours.  I have always been a crier, and losing someone has always been a thing unfathomably sad to me.  How do we ever get past the sorrow that comes with the irreversible absence of someone we love?  How do we ever forget how much we miss them?

I have never dealt much with death myself.  Before Friday, I'd been to one funeral and two memorial services in my twenty nine years of life.  But the people I lost were so far away--physically or emotionally--and I saw them so rarely, that death felt more like a break-up, like a friendship that had faded with time.  My friend Matt died a few years ago, and I've visited his grave at Arlington, but sometimes I still think about him as thought he hadn't, as though he might still send me an email out of the blue tomorrow with stories of Navy flights and parachute practice.

My grandfather was an active part of my life, though.  Anytime anything happened in Baton Rouge, we would at least stop at his house: holidays, football games, hurricanes, baby showers, you name it.  And he would come down to New Orleans, too, for events here: graduations, weddings, and more.  I saw him at least once every other month; more often if I was lucky.  And now I won't.  And I wonder how things will ever be as happy as they were, as love-filled and joyous as they were.

Yet, for all the tears that fell on Friday, there were just as many laughs, just as many smiles.  There, gathered in the church and at the cemetery and in his home, we shared memories and told jokes.  We made fun of siblings who couldn't remember people's names and great aunts who asked intrusive questions.  We laughed as children handed out fake bills from a printing calculator, and as my cousin worried that her twins would be born on Hitler's birthday.  We laughed as he would have, surrounded by the people that give our life meaning and keep us going.  And I suppose that that is how sorrow fades: in the faces of the people who look like him, who act like him, who carry his heart in their heart.  There, his memory and strength live on.


As we parted ways Friday night, different members of the family came up with plans to see each other more.  Beach trips were suggested.  Invitations to come to this city or that city offered.  For all the sadness of the day, we were reminded how blessed we are to be part of this family, to have people as special as those packed into the kitchen and dining room that evening.

When my great aunt came up to say goodbye to my grandmother, they expressed how lucky they were to find such wonderful husbands.  Both married more than 50 years, they'd found men who were strong and caring and perfect for them.  "They never said a cross word," my father said of his parents in the eulogy that afternoon.  "I asked my mother about it once, and she said, 'He may have thought about it once.'"  Driving home that night, I realized just how many examples of strong marriages I have around me: my grandparents, great aunts and uncles, my parents.  Even my older brother has married a woman that simultaneously betters him and adores him.


Saturday, as I spent the afternoon with "Jack," I felt the last threads of our relationship unravel.  On the outside, traipsing through the French Quarter in rain boots and jackets with daiquiris in hand, we seemed alright.  But as he played poker at Harrah's, I scanned facebook on my phone.  As he talked to a friend, I watched a band perform.  As we ate, we grasped at things to say.

Meanwhile, the small things are becoming big things.  I nag; he avoids.  "I'm sorry for getting upset at you earlier about the soap," I said at one point.   "Let's not talk about it right now," he said, as though knowing that it wasn't really about the soap.  Between the schedule conflicts and the lifestyle differences and the lack of passion to make up for all of it, I don't really want to be with him anymore.  I've put the break up off for a long time now, hoping that things would get better, or maybe just avoiding the discomfort of having to say something he might not like to hear.

"Something has to change," I told him on the phone today.  "It's just not working.  I don't know what the solution is: Do we call it quits?  Do we demote ourselves to something less serious?  For all the pressure we've been putting on this relationship, we still only see each other once a week."

"I've been feeling it, too," he replied, "and I know you have.  Do you want to sit down and talk about it?"

So we're getting together on Wednesday.  What the outcome will be, I'm not positive, but my guess is that I'll be single again soon.  And maybe I'll be single again for a while.  Maybe I won't find my other half this year, or next year, or until gray hairs begin to sprout from my head.  Still, it's worth it.  I have to at least give myself the chance.