Today is the first anniversary of my grandfather’s passing. A year ago today we lost him for good. I don’t know how to process that any more now than I did a year ago.

This past Christmas was strange. We didn’t go up to grandpa’s house. He had such a lovely house. Big, open spaces. Tall glass windows that let in so much light. Far away neighbors so that in the winter time you could look outside and feel like you were in some charming midwestern Winter Wonderland. You were, really.

It’s the first Christmas in which we did not see any of my dad’s side of the family. As he neared the end, the family dispersed. Our little unit is scattered and so are they and rounding up the troops in one place was just too hard.

Also maybe too soon.

My dad’s family has always been a little more distant than my mom’s. It was a source of a peculiar hurt and confusion as a kid, because I couldn’t make sense of it. I’ve grown up enough to understand it better, but it still stings. Without my grandpa, I fear the chasm will only grow wider.

The last Christmas we spent with him was painful. We sat in a room and my dad and my uncles all tried to be jovial, but my grandpa was sitting in the room, empty-eyed and strapped to a chair because he couldn’t even hold himself up.

He had been gone for a while. It was sudden in the way that any concrete loss, the final removal of a loved one from your life, is inherently sudden. It’s inherently sudden because there is no such thing as being fully prepared for that. There is no way you can be entirely ready for that.

As long as they’re still here, there can be miracles. And they’re still here. You can hug them and sit with them and oh, god, no, it’s never going to be the same, but they’re present. They’re with you.

Until they’re not. They’re not and however long-time-coming it may have been, it stings.

In the end his house had a medicinal smell to it. You could smell it when you walked in the door, and it lingered in your nostrils as you tried to relax, tried to put yourself at ease and play family fun times. Pretend everything was normal. Pretend that you weren’t feeling this acute and present loss.

It was slow, that way, but no less painful for it in the end.

I want to remember better things. The candy drawer that was the staple of grandpa’s house. The puzzles. His dry sense of humor. But I’m already forgetting those things. The drawn out ending has usurped the rest in my memory and I hate it.

I miss him and I want him back to satisfy my own selfish wish for happier memories. Just a few more good ones that I can freeze frame in my mind and call up instead.

I’m so, deeply sorry that I didn’t grip my heart-hands a little tighter around the better things.