A lot has gone on in the past week. I couldn’t bring myself to write about it until now, I’m not sure why, but it just seemed like something I wanted to mainly keep to myself. I called Elyse a few days ago and talked to her about it for a long time.

Anyway, to clarify things before we get started… I have a VERY complicated family. My mother and my biological dad divorced when I was a baby. My mother remarried a man named Karl, who raised me from the time I was an infant. He died when I was nine and my mom remarried again back in September. So I have several sets of grandparents along with 304823984 million other relatives.

Well, when my dad (Karl) was sick my one grandfather wanted my mother to drive us out to his house (which is about 2 hours away) to have a Christmas dinner. My mother said no, because of how sick my dad was (He died a little less than a month later). After that, I didn’t hear from my grandfather again. I’m not really sure what happened, but I do know that it wasn’t because of anything that I did.

Anyway, about a week ago I got an email from my sister:

Hey sis,

I have some bad news to tell you Grandpop K is in the hospital. He is not doing well at all. Dad is flying out to see him tomorrow. I didn’t know if you found this out I just did today. I am sorry to bring you this bad news. But if you need to talk let me know. Call me on my cell or at the house.

-Leasa

I emailed her back desperate to find out what was going on. She didn’t know much except that it was bad. Real bad. I tried calling her to get my fathers cell phone number (I lost it when I switched phones), but she wasn’t home when I called. I should mention here that almost all of my biological Dad’s side of the family all lives in Arizona and other various places on the west coast, while I’m here on the east coast. Makes it kinda hard to keep in touch sometimes. The only person left here is my Grandpop who was sick. Well my Dad got in touch with me on Thursday to let me know what was going on. We arranged for him to pick me up on Saturday to have lunch with my Dad and to go see my Grandfather.

I come off as a hard ass, but truth be told, I am one of the softest people you could ever meet. I love my family and friends more than life itself and it devastates me when something happens. I went to see my grandfather and now I have so many regrets. He’s going to die. He has a tumor in the middle of his brain, making it inoperable, as well as a tumor on his spine and two more on his liver. There isn’t much they can do. And when I went to see him he said his goodbyes to me. He told me what a beautiful woman I’ve grown up into and that he’s so proud of me for going to school and to do well and make sure that I always take care of myself. And then he talked about the chickens that I used to play with at his next door neighbors house… I don’t even remember that. I’m so sad that I didn’t keep in touch with him. I was young though and I thought he didn’t want to see me because him and my mom had gotten into that disagreement. I know that I was wrong now and I regret it. There are so many times we could have had and now there won’t be any.

One more thing added to the weight of my soul. I should be as hard as a rock by now.