transmothra | may as well cross-post this here...

death has been a part of my life since i was a wee lad. my great grandfather died when i was maybe ten. in first grade we lost a classmate to heartworm. lost a teacher in 7th grade. then high school happened and everyone was dropping like flies. my grandfather's girlfriend died. our class lost a very prominent kid named Kevin Lay, who was a pal of mine; he hit a tree in his car. this kid named Jimmy Harris set himself on fire and died. another friend hung herself. after high school, i lost my dear uncle Stephen to AIDS (i really hit the bottle around then because i had just moved to FL and couldn't get out to see him or anything). then my old pal Mike Mettler hung himself. another pal, Bill White, a phenomenal drummer and guitarist (and sometime rival, alas!) shot himself in the head the summer of 2000. i was planning on reuniting our old band, too.

not long after Bill died, i came back to Ohio to visit my grandparents and crash my 10-year reunion. i saw that they could use some help. it's sad how much grandparents age in just seven years. (oh yeah- they raised me, or my grandmother did anyway when my grandfather was off doing his thing.) so i moved back. my grandmother really wasn't doing too well, and my grandfather was going to have a triple bypass. he made it through his ordeal. but we found out that she had cancer. again. (she has fought bravely against breast and colon cancer before.)

so several months flew by, and i watched her get worse and worse. during the first few months, my grandfather, the Great Denier of the family, had me convinced that she didn't really have cancer. but it gradually dawned on me that she wasn't going to make it. she got worse and worse, and practically lost her mind. the last few days were the worst. she lost her voice, so she couldn't make any last requests or say any last words. on Nov. 6th i threw her a birthday party, with streamers and balloons and cake and a bittersweet card. her birthday was to be on the 20th.

she died on november 8th, with me and her son Craig (my dad) and a couple of nurses in the room at her home.

i have been through so much death, but i had never witnessed its machinations in action. i'm having nightmares about it. i hate knowing things, like how fake it really is when i see someone "dying" on TV or in the movies. they turn blue so fast. you can't lightly brush two fingers down over their eyes to close them; not like they do on TV. they get cold and hard and, well... dead within minutes. and i hate knowing that from experience. i hate even worse that the person i saw die was my dear, sweet grandmother.

and i realise that people who claim to have no regrets in life are liars, or assholes. i regret so much that can never be repaired now. i've been mean to my grandma. i've yelled at her and gotten downright angry with her. and i never spent enough time with her, until it was too late. i'm sure i'm not the only one who feels that way, but i do still, and it hurts like hell.