Loss

At 3:30 PM today my grandmother died. This picture is her with my brother, seven and a half years ago on her birthday.

I am eternally grateful to God that I had the opportunity to see her one last time when I vacationed back in Massachusetts several weeks ago. I became melancholy during my time in Japan almost two years ago when I realized that I might not see her alive again.

Callous is the person who, even preparing for the certain and coming death of a loved one, feels nothing at their passing. Though this day has been approaching for months and years, though I have said my final goodbyes and showered my dear grandmother with my love at every visit, though I have comfort in God I find upon my cheeks the caking salt of tears.

I despise the role of the eulogist, it is impossible. How can one possibly take the lifespan of one person and memorialize it properly? How can one distill the love, the person, the memories known and forgotten, the places and times, the world as it was and now is, the others who passed and have since come, the meals and gatherings, the lessons and mistakes, the heart and soul of any one person? It is a fool's task. Should it ever be asked of me, I will do little but stand at the podium and break down in tears. There is nothing else that befits the position.

Words, those tools that I have often plied with great precision and care, and other times with incredible inaccuracy and wanton abandon, completely fail their master. I could apply any number of adjectives, descriptors, stories and prose to attempt to capture the essence of who my grandmother was; I would certainly scrawl a miserable account that could not even begin to describe this woman.

For now I shall simply grieve.