the old just keep getting older

[transmothra]

saw my grandpa today.

it was hard not to cry in front of him. he just looks so much older than i want him to be. he looks like a weak, frail 85 year old. he is a weak, frail 85 year old.

i'm not grounded any more.

i told him i loved him and that he was my best friend, and my favorite person. most of the time he just laid there with his eyes shut or shutting. he was tired, and his poor old sweet eyes teared up and he told me he loved me with this pained, furrowed brow like 'o god i love you so much'.

it was so hard not to cry in front of him. i miss the young, healthy grandpa who was always tinkering with things, puttering around in the yard or on a ladder or with his power tools.

and i kept thinking, jesus christ, i just went through this in 2001 with my poor sweet old grandma. now i have to sit here and helplessly watch him helplessly die too, just like then.

a whole galaxy of pain, welling up inside of me. why are the young punished with the death and dyingness of the old? it's such an old game, an old tragedy; marked from the very dawn of time and life with saline and regret.

Comments

[howdypumpkin.livejournal.com]

Hi Baby.

I'm sorry for all of this. So, so sorry. More sorry than I can rightly say. I think that it must be all about learning and preparing for what is next, eh? I was telling Jay, just the other day, that I thought that it was good, the way, the older we get the number of people we loose tends to gently increase...that way, when we are approaching our own time to move on from this mortal coil there is just as much waiting for us out there as there is here, or even more.

I know it doesn't help, and I'm sorry for that too.

I love you.

[transmothra.livejournal.com]

i always thought it darkly comical to watch old people read the obits.

"hmm. Helen passed away" (Helen (87), who used to come over & do shots until she could barely stand, one time infamously passing out mostly naked in the backyard)

"Leroy Thomas died last week" (Leroy, 83, who tutored your ass while you were too busy drinking in college"

"looky ol' Murphy dropped dead, i remember Murphy" (76, the one who always showed up late to your parties, but always brought the most interesting people along. and the most booze.)

people known, people we used to kick it with, close friends and cherished, bittersweet rivals, all one day will pass away into dust, and we all will stand and say, "Alas and alack!, but I knew him well, the fiend! may his sweet blasphemous soul rest in harmony with the atoms his own are even now beginning to comingle with, for all of eternity!"

it's a bittersweet tale, and the oldest game in town: every single individual who's ever existed will LOSE. but humanity continues, somehow, to gain, exponentially, through our collective and ongoing losses.

yet only Odin Gallows-god is due the Last Laugh.

sometimes i feel the terrible Weight of all of that loss. and i, too, will one day sure enough pass into dust. the sweet release of the Void looms ever over us all.

(i will not mention you casually when i read your name on that miserable day decades hence. i will break down and weep.)

[hollyquinn1.livejournal.com]

You know what's funny. My great grandma did that, read the obituaries religiously, but my grandma never did. She was an odd lady. I don't think she ever realized she was old, and when she did realize she was pissed about it. She would point out other old folks in our family to me and say things like "she's so old, that's so pitiful." or "I just can't believe how old and sick your aunt is." I remember once pointing out to her that she was older than the person she was commenting on, and she said in her real thick southern accent "darlin bite your tongue." She said it with venom. I think I'm still in shock that she got old enough to die.

You know we've talked about this, everyone will get old enough to die. And it's so weird that now I really would mind dying. I mean that I wouldn't have minded a couple of years back, but now it'd be a real bummer.

[mycrazymind.livejournal.com]

Hi Jer. I still love you!

HEY!!!

[transmothra.livejournal.com]

HUGS x∞!!!