The Leavers Dance....

Hey,
So I've been having a get in bed and pull the covers over your head kind of week.
You ever have one of those? I've just been thinking a lot, more so remembering like when I was younger at my Grandma's funeral .... it was the first funeral I had ever gone to and I remember trying to find her. Not with my eyes but... maybe with my heart?
Sometimes I wonder what the process is after a person dies... I mean do they hang around the funeral to like... make sure they get a proper burial? And I guess to make sure everyone is doing ok?
So I looked for my Grandma, I tried to feel her there. But I couldn't, ya know? There was no rush of warm air or tingle at the back of my head... just nothing. Like that girl in A Chorus Line who is pretending to be a bobsled and everyone in the class is shouting "I feel the snow, I feel the cold, I feel the air!" And she just says "I felt nothing". That was me... Well not totally nothing, the knot in my stomach and the lump in my throat were certainly there. But I didn't feel her.
That night I remember I was lying in my bed and I thought back to the night before. I had been sleeping at Chelsy's house... (my best friend from Elementary)... we had probably been to bed that night by like 9 because thats the bed time of kids in Elementary, right? I don't know it's been too long... anyway, I woke up around 2 in the morning and couldn't fall back to sleep.I specifically remember looking at the clock because I was trying to see a picture of the Backstreet Boys she had on the wall, with the glow of the red numbers... But I had a calm feeling. Kind of, a happy feeling. The next morning when my Dad and Mom came to get me, they told me my Grandma had died around 2:00 that night. Also that a lot of my family members had woken up around the same time in the middle of the night.
I'd like to believe that was my Grandma. Maybe sending her spirit to all of our family as she entered the spirit world. Or maybe I just needed to believe in it at that moment.

There is this poem that I heard and it kind of makes me feel like I'm not totally crazy....
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my sidesays:
“There, she is gone!”“Gone where?”Gone from my sight.
That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
“There, she is gone!”
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.

I went to talk to her yesterday. Talking in the sense of a one-sided conversation. You know, taking flowers... sitting on the grass in front of the headstone... looking like you need to be taken to the looney bin because you are talking to yourself. I like to think she is listening, maybe even watching me. I just needed her to know that I think about her all the time. That she was such a classy example to me and sometimes I want to be just like her. And that my Dad needs her. He doesn't admit it, but a boy needs his mother. No matter how old he gets. He needs her just like I need him.

So if you're missing someone tonight, wondering where they might be... I hope this helps. The lump in your throat and the knot in your stomach you feel when the world comes crashing down, it goes away. I don't know how, but it does. It just takes time... But hey, if you find a way to make it all go away faster... feel free to let me know!