Standing Next To Them, Alone
In the summer of 2021, my paternal grandpa died. I barely knew him. I can maybe think of a handful of times I talked to him in my 37 years. I heard he was dying just a short few weeks before he died. I was on a camping trip with my boys and my soon-to-be-ex-husband when I talked to my dad for the first time in over two years. We had been trying to reconnect a bit over text in the weeks before and he thought it would be good to call me to tell me that Grandpa was in hospice.
I was sitting by the fire with my oldest and ex when he called. I picked up the phone and walked away. As my dad spoke, giving me an update on Grandpa, I strolled around the stored boat trailers, left behind in exchange for summer fun on Lake Huron.
I stared down at my feet and listened, trying to remember what my dad’s voice sounded like. Did he sound the same? Was this the man I remember? His voice sounded both familiar and completely new.
He droned on about heart disease and gave me the news that Grandpa had been sick for a while. He told me like it was nothing, like something that just happens. He was a bit shaken, but stoic. I responded but not with many words. I was frozen, trying to soak in my dad’s voice and remember if it always sounded that way.
After what seemed like an hour, my dad hung up and I knelt down next to the boat trailer, leaning over it sobbing. My body couldn’t handle the wait of my grief. I had just heard my dad’s voice and he was telling me his dad was dying.
I took the time to gather myself so I could return to the fire. I had to pull myself together, because I couldn’t bear to go back to share the news with my son and I could bear less to have an emotional conversation with my soon-to-be-ex while on a last ditch family vacation.
I walked slowly back to the fire and sat down. My ex knew the conversation I was having was hard and grabbed the whiskey. The three of us sat around the fire and laughed and talked until it got too late for us all. The entire time I felt like I was living outside of myself above that fire and our conversation.
The next day it rained the entire day. I spent the day trying to encourage everyone to have fun. All I could think about was my dad and how I didn’t really want to be on this trip with my ex.
My body ached from the rain and the pain of the feelings locked up inside it. I barely made it through the day and woke up the next morning to a sore back and popped four ribs out of joint while we were packing up the van. My body gave up, I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with the pain of everything I couldn’t live out loud.
I popped a muscle relaxer and drove the four hours home.
The weeks that followed that trip were a blur of family summer fun, camping, fireworks, and pretending. I was living with my ex as we tried to navigate our new separated life together and trying to find time to grieve and feel all that conversation brought me.
During those weeks, I found myself balled up on the floor next to my bed more times than I can count. That spot on the floor became my solace. The only place I couldn’t fall any further.
We tried one more family trip for the Fourth of July to one of our favorite camping spots with friends who had been at the center of our marriage. Looking back now, I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. I was a crab without a shell, barely making it day-to-day, pushing through my extremely tense break up and grieving over lost fantasies of a close extended family, in a space with friends who weren’t supportive of the decisions I was making to leave my ex.
On the second day of our trip, I got a text from my Dad with just one line, “Grandpa died this morning.”
When I picked up my phone to see that message, I stood frozen on the beach while everyone around me went on like the day was still a normal, glorious, July day.
It had only been a month since I last spoke to my dad, he said it would take longer. I told everyone, giggled nervously, and decided to head home. I hugged and kissed both my boys on the forehead and left them with their dad and my old friends. I went home to ball up in a lump on the couch under a blanket for the remainder of the weekend.
After emerging from that couch a day later, I found myself waiting again on the floor next to my bed. My Dad sent me an update that the funeral wouldn’t be for another couple weeks. No one told me Grandpa was sick. No one reached out to me to fill me in. Now I had to wait more time in anticipation of grieving with people I haven’t seen in so long.
As the funeral approached, I swirled constantly with how to enter that space. I was a lesbian about to be divorced and it was all still a big secret. My boys didn’t even know yet. In the end, I decided to take my shell-less body alone to the funeral.
The day of the funeral I had the house without my ex and the boys. It was a welcomed, rare occasion. The night before my partner had slept over. She helped me get through the anxieties of my night before and left the next morning with a big hug and asked me to check in as the day went on. I got dressed in black, hopped in my minivan, searched for the right soundtrack on Spotify, and headed off to the funeral.
On my way to the funeral, I stopped to get my van washed. I had barely gotten it washed all summer and knew my grandpa would appreciate that I showed up in a clean vehicle. A clean car was one of the only things I knew he liked.
When I got to the funeral, I was the last of my family to arrive. I parked in the back of the line of cars and walked across the cemetery to where my grandpa’s semi truck was parked and my family was waiting and talking. As I walked across the cemetery, I secretly hoped everything would feel normal again. We’d all been in this spot before when my grandma died, maybe we could be transported back in time together and skip all the uncomfortableness of no longer knowing each other.
Thankfully, one of my aunts spotted me first and ushered me in for a hug. I needed that small moment of foundation before seeing my dad. When my dad spotted me, he came up to me and he hugged me while we cried together. We stood there crying and hugging for a while then he said the only thing I remember him saying to me all day, “I’m glad you’re here.”
While my aunts gave their eulogies and Alabama played over the loudspeaker, I stood there imagining I was part of the family again, staring off across the cemetery. I was there in the middle of a group of people I had known for 37 years feeling completely alone.
That was the day I began to grieve the loss of my grandpa, my dad, and the heteronormative life they all were accustomed to me living.
