dead dead.

I was driving the two miles from my grandparents' house to the pavement, and I broke.

My grandfather is dead. Like... dead dead. The kind of dead that doesn't talk, or move, or you know, do anything that generally signifies life. Dead.

The last five days have been a bit of a busy blur, so it wasn't until today that the whole thing came to me. It's over. What started with a phone call, and a pitch-dark drive through the Missouri hills ended this morning with a rainy drive back to Springfield, and back to my life. Now there's just the reality to deal with. The absence.

I don't have an epic set of wonderful memories with my grandfather. Sometimes, I think it's easier to process these things when you do.

I have a complicated set of memories. Like us all, my grandpa was not perfect.

I wasn't expecting to feel this way. I didn't think I'd ever be doing this--searching back through my memories for the last time I saw him, what he said to me, for the first time I met him, for the things about him I loved. As I went to tears in my car this morning, I realized that my lack of mourning over the past five days has not in fact been a lack of love. That's comforting, in a strange way.

I knew someone I loved, and he's gone now. But I knew someone I loved.