Facing loss

What I feared most had to happen eventually: losing a loved one.

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I never thought death would happen very early in my family. Then again, I never expected time to go by so fast! It wasn’t exactly early, but I found myself a seventeen year-old going on eighteen, getting ready to graduate from school and preparing to get into university. Everything was brilliant; I saw my future career come closer as time went by. Nothing could stop all this excitement!

That’s what I thought, at least. Shortly before I graduated, he got very ill and I was visiting him in the hospital on a sad Sunday afternoon. I didn’t feel so good. He was coughing and unable to eat, barely talking, and I was uncomfortable inside this hospital room where he was. I left the room and waited outside for my parents to come. On the following day, I was told he was moved into intensive care, with no one beside him, because nobody was allowed in there for more than fifteen minutes. I was used to this fact. In the past five or six years he had been to the hospital at least once a year, including the year when he practically spent an entire month in Hotel Dieu, supposedly one of the best hospitals in the country. So when mom told me this, I didn’t react to this “normal” news. I just thought that he’d spend a week or two and get out, as usual, just like it has been all these years!
Wednesday was a day like any other, or so it started. But for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking of him. From the minute I woke up I thought about him. I told my best friend about this uneasy feeling I had, and little did I know at the moment.

2:30 pm. The bell rang and I was free for fifteen minutes before my afternoon math course, one that I hated quite a lot, and I had a quiz that day. But right before the second bell rang, I saw mom. She asked me if I had something important this afternoon, and seemed a little distraught. I felt her trying to hold something back. A few tears fell slowly from her eyes, and then it hit me.

“Don’t tell me he’s gone!” I shouted without even thinking. She nodded…and I broke down. I felt my heart had burst out of my chest, I couldn’t breathe, and I wanted to scream! I cried and threw myself in her arms, unable to do anything else. I had to leave school. I rushed upstairs, sobbing desperately, and told my teachers why I had to leave. But I still didn’t get it. He couldn’t possibly be gone!

That’s it. That was the only reaction I could have. After that I spent three of the darkest days in my life. My uncles all came from abroad, and for the first time ever I saw them all together. I saw Rafic at first. I came to say hi and the only thing he could tell me was “I don’t want to see you crying. Don’t let me see you crying!” These were the first few words I got from the uncle I hadn’t seen in about four years. Then my aunt told me the same thing. Then everyone else was suddenly telling me the same bloody thing! “Don’t cry”, “you should be strong for grandma’s sake”, “don’t let the kids see you crying”. Fine. I didn’t cry. Every time a single tear would try to come out, I’d push it back inside! They had no idea how much it hurt!!

A year later, I still haven’t dropped a tear. As it is custom here, we “celebrated” his year of death and had lunch with the family after mass. I will never forget the incredible things the priest said about him that day! Every one ended up crying, of course, but not me. I listened carefully to every word he said, and slowly I realized how important this man was in our lives, in our family, in the very foundation of this family! But I didn’t cry. It’s not that I don’t miss him! The tears I should’ve shed were now long gone, buried in the deepest secrets of my heart. I listened to the priest, and instead of crying I held my head high, for I am proud to belong to the family of this man!

The tears may be gone, but the sorrow remains. I miss him, I love him, I am proud of him. I am proud to be his grand-daughter. Rest in peace grandpa!