stand up straight

I don't know where to begin.

It seems impossible (impossible, concluded definitively from a sample set of four) to have a semester without some sort of catastrophe.

This round - my grandmother, Sherin Rose Bowen, has... yeah, I still don't have a phrase for this that I'm okay with using. 'Gone on ahead'. The story's been posted at sherinbowen.com, I linked it last time. Such an enormous shock. Her birthday was on February 28, shared with my dad, her son. She was in Nicaragua at the time, leading an Eco-Tour and carrying out other business, and for that reason I held off on printing/framing a photo as her gift (this one, of the boathouse at her lakeside cottage). There was supposed to be time.

My mom's mother died (died, what an awful, abrupt word) some years ago. Old age, it was her time. I confided in my grandfather that, yes, I was bored sitting there in the care facility where she spent her last couple weeks. Callous little eleven-year-old. >_>

But that was different, altogether. A horrible thing for my mom to go through, no doubt, but at least it was expected. Everyone saw it coming.

This time, my dad's mother was put into a coma and never came back.

No one got to say goodbye.

The outpouring of support, the stories and memories coming in from every continent has been overwhelming. I didn't realize the scope of my grandmother's work until this, her death. Unfortunate, to say the least, but it has truly been incredible.

Which, I don't know, maybe softens it a little. Or makes it worse, one of the two, to know that she was loved by so many and is so suddenly gone.

As far as this stage of life is concerned (yeah, I'm going to go there), it seems like we can only cope by acclimation. Give it time, survive for a few months/years and gradually forget how much it hurt. But I don't understand how anyone can deal with life without seeing something after it.

.. No, I take it back. I can understand. Just makes life that much more valuable, right? Carpe diem while we still can. The days only last for so long.

So maybe it's just me, maybe I'm overreacting. Going to go out on a limb here and say that, given the circumstances, I'm allowed to suspend my usual existential despair and try to focus on what hope is left.

But regardless, life goes on. It's Wednesday.