surprises and nonsense.

I spent yesterday with my grandmother. She lost her husband, and I lost my grandfather, and being alone together for the day before family arrived from the North was, frankly, alternately heart-breaking and then awkward.

We made phone calls. We sat with neighbors. We went to the diner and picked at a plate of cheddar bites. We looked through every family photo taken since 1939. She wandered. I texted. She cried. I held.

She began grieving immediately. I just realized I might be grieving.

Some things about her grief surprise me.

It seems to come in waves. She's okay, she's okay, she's okay, and then, suddenly, I see the panic come--she realizes it's not okay, she thinks, "It won't ever be ok again."

She wanted me in the room with her more than I expected. "To talk for me if I start crying too hard," she told me.

Some things about my own "grief" surprise me.

I want to be around people. But I don't want them to talk--not to me, anyway. When they start talking to me, it's too much, too many decisions. What will I say back? Am I supposed to say something funny, something relevant, something sympathetic?

I'm very pragmatic about his death as a personality in my life, but completely shattered over his death as a soul before God. I keep wondering at God's own brokenness over the loss of a child. Does God grieve?

That last part--that's the thing. I'm haunted by the possibility.

None of this makes any sense.