the distance created in a good bye between my parents after a time such as this one caused a wound to open in me and bleed warm salt water. sitting in the back seat barely awake and watching the landscape become uglier with every descending foot. i could not keep myself from thinking of every single beautiful moment of this time in my life and all the lessons that i learned about life and love and wisdom and honor and manhood and innocence. i don't think there was a single moment of this entire period of time where, if i'd let down my guard, i wouldn't have broken down in tears of pain and sorrow or beauty and joy. there were a few moments where i could not hold it in for the life of me, such as watching my grandmother weeping by her lover's bedside reading old love letters they had written back and forth every single day that he was in the war. seeing the fervent love that she still had for this man. we all saw a kind old man taking in his last painful breaths but she saw her lover. she saw him laying there with his eyes half shut, mouth gaping, pleading with his body to have more grace than this and she saw a man that she was completely in love with in so many different ways. i will tell you right now that most people go through their whole lives never seeing through eyes such as hers.
i am sure it that to some of you this may seem over done, almost self pitiful to still be going on about my grandfather's death. but that is ok, one of my biggest fears would be to someday come across a human or situation and think, "i have no lesson to learn or wisdom to gain here."