The Troll-Queen of Angmar

It's funny how the simplest of moments can run away from you.

I was sitting there in the office, massaging Mom's head because her sinuses are bothering her, telling her about the poem I'm choosing for this close reading assignment. Something by Robert Frost called "Home Burial," and I sat there with her head in my hands, quietly telling her about the poem's married couple falling apart over old grief about their child's death and grave.

When I pulled away, she was crying. It's the sixth anniversary of my grandfather's death. I didn't even know.

He killed himself six years ago today, just a couple weeks shy of the timeline the doctors gave him for when he would need to go on a respirator. The respirator would have left him house-bound- Grandpa wasn't the kind of person to accept something like that. Everyone still thinks it was the ALS that killed him, but honestly, it was his own baggage about not wanting to be a burden on his family. There's so much I could say here, so many rambles I could go on - how much we loved him, if he'd let us in we could have talked about it, the support he needed that we could have given, why we need right-to-die in this country - but I've said it all before, almost.

It still hurts to go down to Florida and see Grandma's car alone in the garage. It hurts every time I say "Grandma and-" and have to cut myself off.

Six years later, I still say it.

It hurts, but I have no idea how Mom must feel. She sat there crying and told me about her best friend Denise dying. I remember that, too. I was eight years old and her daughter was my best friend- Mom and Denise, me and Kelsey. Kelsey was eight, her sister was 14, and Denise was too young to go. It was the first time I experienced a death that meant something. "I think about it now, Amy, and... I'm kind of over it. It's sad, but I've moved on. But it's not like that with Dad. It's like- this black hole, that I can't talk about with anybody. Maybe that's part of it."

The thing is, the official story doesn't have the suicide part in it. My cousins don't even know. Grandpa was in that category of "old", so people never ask "how did he die?" They just assume he died of Old.

He wasn't old. He was only 73, and he had so much living left to do.

I'm lucky because I have the Internet. In this six years, I've talked about it a lot. I can talk to my friends, to people at school, and they don't know him. But in Mom's world, almost the only people who know are grieving as much as her- Grandma (who can barely talk about it) and my aunts (one of whom can barely talk about it).

This post could have had a point, I guess. I'm just rambling at this point. It's just strange how things are lining up- Mom was at Category School this weekend, to re-certify as a barbershop singing judge. They felt the absence of a woman named Wendy who goes every year, who everyone in the organization knows. Wendy's sister Debbie was the baritone in Mom's quartet when they won the international quartet championship- so mom and Debbie, they've gone thorugh a lot together. They were best friends.

Wendy wasn't at judging school this weekend because their mom is dying. Mom's been telling me for a week now that she needs to call Debbie, to talk to her and see how she's doing, and I kept wondering why she wouldn't. Why she was putting it off.

I guess I see it now.

I didn't know what to say to her. My own mom, my own grandpa, and I had no fucking clue. Yesterday I kicked this plushie around that screams when you kick it, and it reminded me- just coincidentally, it reminded me of Grandpa. When he died, after I hung up the phone from hearing the news, I beat into it for twenty minutes until my muscles hurt and my throat was hoarse. I thought it was just coincidence, but it really was today.

When she apologized for pulling me away from my homework and asked what I had to do next, I didn't want to tell her. I just made shit up. The truth is I should be doing my Spanish homework- we're reading up on controversial issues, you see, and we're debating one of them in class this week.

Euthanasia. I couldn't tell her.

Now I have this damn homework to do- research euthanasia, dissect a poem about death, and I can't. I can't fucking do it. I can't even do tags, because half of them are for Asgard and are about parents dying.

A week from now will be the six-year anniversary of my first serious boyfriend dumping me. Yeah, he canned me a week after Grandpa died, after eighteen months.

I wish I had my kitty to cuddle.