When someone leaves, it’s no big deal if they forget to say goodbye. But what if they left… and never came back? They left and you never got to say goodbye. You never got to say.. well.. anything.
It has been five years since I lost my grandparents. Five years since I last saw their smiling faces. Five whole years and I can’t forgive myself for not saying goodbye.
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Two days before my Mamaw Nette passed away, I visited her in the hospital. I remember her texting me a couple of days prior and asking me why I hadn’t come to see her yet, that she was really sick. But I’ll be honest, I wasn’t ready to accept the truth. Finally, however, I knew I had to see her. The only problem- the woman in the hospital bed I went to see was not my grandmother.
When I entered the room, I noticed she wasn’t acting like herself. It didn’t take long for me to realize that something was really, really wrong. She didn’t recognize me. My best friend, in the entire world, didn’t know who I was. Even worse? She thought I was someone else. Someone who was the equivalent to gum on the bottom of her shoe.
My grandma began yelling at me, loudly, to leave her room. She stated that she did not want me there and she had no desire to see me. She screamed at me to leave her hospital room because she hated me. My best friend looked me in the eyes and yelled, “get out, I do not want you here.”
Shortly after the incident, I was informed that my grandmother had a stroke, and her memory was very foggy. While my mamaw’s memory was spotty, mine isn’t. The last memory I have of my grandmother is her telling me to leave her hospital room because she hates me.
I realize that she didn’t mean the things that she said, and that the anger wasn’t directed towards me. But I hope the woman it was directed towards understands the damage she has done. I didn’t get to tell my best friend, in the whole world, goodbye and that I love her because she thought I was someone else.
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I was fifteen minutes away from the hospital when my Papaw Steve passed away. My dad called as I was driving over railroad tracks and asked what I was doing. When I explained that I was on my way to the hospital, he said I could see my grandma but that my grandpa had passed away. I was fifteen minutes away.
After pulling over to vomit, I asked my mom to drive me to the cemetery where my mamaw was buried. With tears in my eyes and my knees buckling from underneath me, I dropped to her headstone and begged her to watch after my dad. In a span of five months, he lost both his mother and his father. I cried, pleaded, begged, and bargained for someone to please help my dad get through the pain I knew he was feeling. If his pain was anywhere close to mine… it had to be unbearable.
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Nobody told me the severity of my grandparents’' illness. Nobody told me that their time was expiring. Nobody told me. Nobody.
At both funerals, I gave a eulogy. I felt it was my responsibility to speak on their lives and the incredible impact they had on mine. I felt because I didn’t get to say goodbye, it was the least I could do.
During both eulogies I stated, “Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.”
It’s been 1,826 days and I still have no words to explain the pain I feel when I think about my grandparents. My only hope is that they are the glimmer in the sky I see before the sun sets. The cardinal that flies across my backyard first thing in the morning. The rainbow I see during a rain shower. I hope I’m making them proud, wherever they are. And I hope they both know how much of my heart they held, and how much love I have for them.
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