#loveyougram

[mentalink]

Missing Gram on the one year anniversary of her being gone. #pittsburgh #brightonheights #livedto98 #missher #bestgramever #alwaysinmyheart #loveyougram

[samanthaofanarchy]

Missing my Gram today, so I made our favorite sandwich we used to share, cream cheese and olives 😊❤️ #CreamCheeseAndOlives #LoveYouGram #MissYou #ExtraOlivesOnTheSide #BecauseWhyNot

[eliseiam]

Missing you on today and every day 'till I won't have to anymore. 👼🏾 #youngangel #LoveYOUGram #MISSyouGram 🙏🏾💙

[kaylashannell]

In remembrance of Drusilla Ford

Today marks two years since my grandmother died.  Two days ago would've been her 85th birthday.  I'm posting this on here because if I post anything on facebook about it my dad will literally break down and cry, probably call me, and I can't handle that. Twitter is too short to handle this.  I can't keep it in any longer.  I need to write.  I need to talk about this, because for two years I haven't been able to.  I haven't written down how I feel.  Or what happened.  I don't want to forget.  

Two years and a week ago, my grandma told my dad she had been having some trouble breathing.  We called an ambulance.  Men and women I didn't know came into her house.  It was terrifying, but she was okay.  She kept saying that.  She was fine.  Except she wasn't.  My Grandmother had been living with a collapsed lung for at least a few days.  How does that happen? How can a women, who has battled cervical cancer, won, and was now slowly dying of lung cancer, survive days with a collapsed lung?

 It gets worse though.  The next morning, at 5 am, I was to leave for Nashville, Tennessee with my music department.  Talk about a tough choice.  It was the worst.  I was crying.  Sitting in the damn hospital room until 2 am, trying to make a decision on whether or not I should leave her.  But It wasn't my decision.  She told me to go, she told me I had to.  I couldn't argue.  How could I tell her no? How could I say that I wanted to stay with her before she got so bad that I couldn't bear it any longer, before she got so bad that I didn't want to see her anymore?

But I went.  I took the half hour trip home, packed my bag, and, crying my eyes out, got on a 12 hour bus ride to Nashville.  How did I do it? How did I have the strength to get on that bus, with all of my peers staring at me.  Wondering why I clutched my pillow so hard.  Wondering why I had bit my lip so hard that it bled.  How I made it those four days was a mystery, and still is. It was fun.  I was newly single.  Finally broke it off with some piece of shit who took my virginity and my sanity.  I had planned to start new that trip.  Forget about him.  Find someone else to enjoy my time with.  Instead I spent most of the time on my phone.  Making sure she was okay.  Hundreds of dollars stashed into my suitcase and even more on my debit card in case I needed to buy a plane ticket out of there.  I didn't have a plan.  If things went bad I was to get on a plane.  I didn't know who would pick me up from the airport or how I would even get to the airport, but I knew that if my mom said I needed to come home I would be gone.  Things turned out okay.  Gram came home.  She wasn't in that white walled hospital bed anymore.  I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.

When I got home, my grandma was in her living room.  On some bed that wasn't hers.  Her couch was replaced with some stupid hospice bed.  Her usual sweaters and stretchy pants replaced with a bleak hospital gown and those stupid yellow socks that they give you for what seems to be no reason.  It was her birthday the day after I got home. April 30th. My 'cousin' (for lack of a better term; he's family, but not by blood) and his new wife (he's gay, that's a WHOLE other story) helped me bake her a cake that we knew she couldn't eat.  It just felt good to be busy.  To be making the frosting that she taught me how to make so many years ago in her kitchen. To smell the delicious cake batter as it baked in the oven.  It was a smell the house was used to.  It eased everyone's spirits, and made us relax. 

I even put the cowboy hat that I bought from Nashville on her head.  A silver butterfly in the middle, her favorite.  She hated that hat.  The glare that I got and the fake laugh made me take it off of her head and put it back on my own.  She smiled. It was like nothing was wrong.  Except for the oxygen tank, and the nurses running in and out, and all the family that I had been called either there or blowing up our phones.  But she got better.  Her lung wasn't going to re-inflate, it was too late for that, but she could breathe on her own, she could talk, she was okay.

I went to school.  After skipping the Monday after returning from Nashville and Tuesday for her birthday, I went to school.  It took my mind off of everything.  Until I got the "come straight home" text from mom.  Everyone was outside.  She had gotten worse.  They asked if I wanted to go inside.  I couldn't.  I didn't want to.  I didn't want to see her like that.  We didn't sleep that night. We lived across the street.  Just a seconds run away from where she laid.  Someone was always there.  The 'cousin' I talked about earlier was staying there.  Attending to her needs because we couldn't.  We had done that for years.  Taken care of her, and now that it was the end we couldn't do it.  My dad couldn't go inside the house.  Justin, my brother, couldn't either.  Only my mom could, but every time she came out she was crying too hard to even say anything.

It was early the next morning.  I think.  I don't even remember.  I remember being woke up by crying. My dad's, again, I think. I tend to block out the moments I've seen him cry. I took a shower.  I took my time going outside.  Again they asked if I wanted to go inside.  "See her one last time" My uncle begged. But I couldn't.  I still have trouble going into that damn house.  New faces live there.  Faces that don't belong.

My dad went in.  We cried.  We laughed.  We drank.  Anything to break the tension.  People showed up.  I went home.  They took the body.  Mom told me when she was gone.  More crying.  Back outside. The sun was shining.  Butterflies hatched from their cocoons and swarmed the sky.  One landed on me. Orange. Monarch.  I let it sit there till the wind blew it away.  Cried again.  and again.  and again.  I couldn't stop.  But then I did.  and I watched everyone else cry, because I couldn't anymore.  

I shut down.  pushed people away.  Ex boyfriend tried.  Fuck him.  Asshole.  Friends tried.  Brushed them off.  Changed topic.  Counselors tried.  Skipped appointments. That's when I wanted to do it again.  Take the knife to my skin like I had before, when the darkness swallowed me. Fuck the ex boyfriend who made me so sad, who made me hate my life, but I could never leave him.  The darkness tried to take me. I didn't let it.  Fuck depression.  She didn't want me to be that person.  I didn't want to be that person.  Fuck the hormones.  Fuck the people who told me the sadness was just a thought that I let take over me.  But I didn't cut.  I refused.  I didn't want to hurt anymore, but taking the knife to my skin wouldn't of helped.  It would've made my spiral down, and I wouldn't be where I am at today if I would've.  

We didn't have the funeral until that summer.  May 2nd was the day she died, but the funeral was months later.  It wasn't even a funeral.  We took that small box of ashes and put it in the ground.  I cried again that day, as the pastor read words from the bible she loved. I dug my nails into my palm until it bled.   Clenched my brothers hand until both of ours went numb.  He had to drag me there.  I wouldn't get out of the car to walk to the grave that I had visited a million times to see the grandfather and uncle I had never met.   Just because she was there.  I couldn't seem to do it.  I cried.  I screamed.  I made a huge scene in front of my family, but I didn't care.  I didn't want to be there.  I couldn't accept that she was gone.  I couldn't live without seeing her every day before school.  I didn't want to live with the thought that she would never make me mac n cheese mixed with hot dogs ever again.  No more Ramen noodles after school.  No more delicious holiday dinners at her house. I was the one who would need to make the sugar cookies at every holiday now. I had to do it all.  Alone.  Because she was the only one who ever had the time and patience to deal with my shitty frosting ability.  I didn't want to be without her.  I still don't. 

Two years ago I didn't believe in a God.  How could someone who had control over everything tear the most influential person out of my life when I was only 17.  I should have had more time with her.  I wanted more time with her.  I didn't understand how the 'Almighty God' could put me through all of that.  

Now I do.  Circumstances changed.  I went to Church with the new boyfriend. The one that was there for me when we buried her.  The one who made me realize that not all men were dicks.  It started that I went to make him happy.  Then I went to make me happy.  I loved it.  I loved the people.  I love the feeling of singing the hymns about God.  I loved God.  I don't know when it hit me.  Maybe the day I visited my Grandmother's grave and I realized that she wasn't there.  

Just because her remains were there, doesn't mean she was.  She's everywhere.  She's around me all the time.  She watched me open all my acceptance letters to college. She watched as I fell in love. She watched as I accepted my college.  She watched me walk across the stage at Graduation. She watched as I had my heart broken again, and scolded me for crying over some stupid boy. She watched me find someone new, and is probably shaking her head as I constantly think about how he really could be someone special in my life for a long time.  She is hoping I make the right choices.  Sigh's every time I touch the glass of liquor to my lips, and every time I took a hit off of a cigarette.  Laughs when I make some stupid mistake.  Smiles when I make her cookies.  Frowns when I don't measure things right or forget the Crisco, and laughs again when I try to fix it after it's too late.   She was watching me two days ago when I cried over not having her birthday anymore. She watched me as I finished my last final of my freshman year.  Smiling because I'm the first kid to go to college directly after high school.  She's proud because I've become the things I've always dreamed of, but she's disappointed that I'm not yet completely happy with who I am yet.  

She's there.  Above me, watching. Behind me, making sure I don't fall back.  Holding my hand and dragging me forward.  She's here. With me.  All the time.  I need to remember that.