"I'm not sure how to say it..." When your grandfather is sick, those seven words say it all. Those seven words spell out death. I was doing okay, I'm pretty good at making logical arguments with myself. Every time I got close to crying I told myself, "He loved Jesus. He's in Heaven." "He didn't suffer long," "The cancer would have taken months and beaten him down, this is better." All true, and all kept me sane as I drove home in Dallas traffic. But one can only repeat those things to themselves so many times before your mind starts to wonder.
     "Now they're both gone. Daddy's an orphan. At least I'll remember him. I remember so little of Dadum (Mom's dad), I was only 9. LC's only 4..." And that's when I started crying. Grandma Elaine died in 1984, years before my parents married and long before they had any grandkids. I never got the chance to meet her, something I am painfully aware of whenever I use my middle name, and anytime someone pays me the compliment of saying I am so much like her (her brother calls me his little Elaine because I remind him of her, though I'm not so little anymore). LC is in this boat as well, sharing my namesake but never getting the chance to meet her...
     ...and now "Grandpa Charlie" as she called him, is gone too. When I realized that she would probably remember very little about our grandpa, my heart broke. I loved Dadum, and I remember him, but just bits and pieces, a lot of what I know about him, his character, his personality  comes from stories I've heard over the years from my family, and things you can figure out based on pictures and the way people talk about him. LC will have that too, we'll talk about grandpa, and our fathers will tell stories about him and grandma Elaine, but her memory base is just so small, she's only 4.
     My family is stoic, that's what my Mom calls them, really they just don't talk much about their feelings. I get it, every time I even think about it I cry. And I know we have lots of men in this family, and men don't cry, at least not in front of their kids, but I needed to cry. I needed to talk to someone, and everyone here is busy taking care of things, or taking care of someone. So thanks for listening, because I'm not stoic, I'm a freaking mess.