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i don't even know how to start this. i have had a pretty crazy day today. after a twelve hour shift of sweat and stress, i sit here now in my comfort, my connection with my loved ones. a glass of wine and a beautiful song called "am i born to die?". my feet hurt and my sore back feels too old. my heart is starting to weigh down so suddenly as i now have a chance to think. just think.
i need you, if you will. i lack the faith, trust, patience and understanding right now to handle this situation in prayer myself. i am asking you all, my friends to please help me. it is about my grandfather, Robert Heule, my dad's dad. he is not dead, but even as i say that i think i am making what happened sound better that death. he has been so ill with so many things one of them being parkinson's. as my grandmother began to not be able to take good enough care of him by herself and with a call nurse, our family decided to put him in a home. i have only gone to see him once and it hurt like hell. the putrid smell of death and moans of fading sanity hit me like a frieght train. i remember holding his hand and he slowly turned and looked up at me and all he could do was smile with his eyes. he has always had the most heart warming and beautiful smile.
anyways, i got a call from my mother yesterday and i could tell instantly that something was wrong. i guess the guy that was in the bed next to him died a little while ago and so they put a new man next to him. my mom said that last time they went to see my grandpa they saw this guy and thought it was kind of odd that he was there being that he seemed kind of younger and not in too bad of shape. they found out that the guy had some pretty serious mental problems. i guess yesterday morning he had a fit of rage and took it out on my grandfather.
laying there fragil and helpless my grandpa was beaten over and over nearly to death by this lunatic.
i can't discribe the kind of disgust i feel over this. i cannot understand the tragedy of that moment. the confussion of my sweet grandfather as he laid there helpless and stunned wondering why this was happening. to tell the truth i can't honestly say that i understand why this had to happen. if this is somehow God's will fuck it. if this is somehow man's fault because of sin fuck that too. i don't get it and my heart cannot grasp it. if i knew that i was going to spend my whole life being an honest, hard working, God-fearing man. be a father of integrity and a passionate loving husband. that i was going to be a trully, trully good man who is respected and wise. and then spend the last part of my life laying in a bed in a dark room alone with all my loved ones somewhere else still living out their lives. waking up in their own beds and bathing themselves and working with their own hands to feed their own mouths and falling in love again and again and again. and if someone one told me i was to lay there, falling apart, slowly begining to fade from earthly existence, loosing understanding of the simplest things. then, when it all seems to be coming to a painfully slow end, someone was going to make a bad decision and because of one decision to put a man in a bed i was going to get the shit beaten out of me? if someone were to tell me that this is how my life would be i would tell that person to fuck off.
am i supposed to tell myself, "well we have a place waiting for us where everything will be perfect and we will be there for eternity." isn't that what christians are supposed to do? isn't that what we have to believe? isn't that what we are supposed to tell our friends when something like this happens. "oh derek don't worry, he will be in a better place soon." how well we all are at memorizing and perfecting our script!!!
i will be honest with all of you, i don't know what heaven will be like. i don't know if i like the idea of eternity. to tell the truth i am afraid of heaven. because of my lack of wisdom and my over abundance of emotion i want to dis-prove all of it. i want to just say "fuck that! it does not work, i don't think that truth would look so much like the nightmare that it does." but i lack the ability to grasp the idea of believing or disbelieving and so i am stuck here.
there is just too much saddness and pain it is too heavy.
i am sorry for such honesty. this just really hurts and i feel so afraid because i can't lie to myself and say that i get it or that this is ok because of what is next. my heart is completely broken for my grandmother and how alone she must feel and how much things must be different now. i cannot even begin to allow myself to think of the pain that my own father feels or how i would feel if it were him. i am sure that in the morning i will think of this as selfish or self pityful compared to others, maybe. but this is how i feel right now and i am not going to hide that.

i remember a picture that i loved to look at when i would visit my grandparents' house. it was of my grandpa when he was in the airfoce in world war two. he was wearing a bombers jacket with a shirt and tie underneath. he had a smooth, young shaven face and a fighter's cap on. you could tell beneath the sideways cap that his dark hair was slick and shiny. he looked so handsome and impenetrable. i used to love to tell my friends that he was a gunner on the planes with the glass nose that you would sit in. and all that i can recognize or connect with that picture to him now is the way his eyes still glow wildly when he smiles.