My grandfather died today. He and I haven’t been the closest in the last decade, but my mother looked up to him more than I have ever known her to do. He had been dying for a while, it was sad but expected, and I had made my peace with it.

But the text comes through, “Papa died”.

I felt my heart flinch but overall hold strong. I offer to call her to console and hold her hand through the loss of her father as I hope someone does for me. I have always held my mother’s sadness, her grief, her depression. I have always made space for her gloom as I know it as not desired by her. It is an affliction like most things are.

So I held space for her sadness once more. She grasped for control retelling the events for me: her brothers’ lack of presence, the hand squeezes meaning “I love you”, the funeral arrangements.

All the while, still I held strong, offered words of condolence and support. After all, I am truly used to my mother’s sadness, it has been a companion for the entirety of my conscious memory. Then my Nana’s voice comes through the phone, watery and quiet. The voice of someone who just lost their husband, their partner, their friend.

That was when I cracked, rubs puncturing my heart and severing my will.

Being separated from my husband currently has brought more clarity than sadness as the situation is. Though hearing someone lose theirs unwillingly wrenched my heart into a contorted pile of wreckage. The entity of choice disintegrated.

I truly only hope that whoever life gives me to sit with on my deathbed will love me as she loved him. Will weep when my eyes close eternally and hold my soul safely in theirs. My mother’s sadness and mine, familiar friends. Nana’s sadness sat atop the wall I carefully constructed and the weight crushed stone after stone, exposing my raw flesh to the crows.

Too familiar sadness can be, it was nice to know that I could still feel so deeply.

Substack