calling, finally.

it was a phone call i didn't want to make for reasons i couldn't explain until now. now i know that talking to him forced me to face some truths that i run from on a daily basis. sometimes i am amazed at the game i play with my heart, little-white-lying to myself about the most important things i say i believe. it's just too hard to live in the truth sometimes, but it's a bad habit to avoid it for too long. i guess that's why God allows us to cycle through these times of joy and grief, times when it's all too easy to forget, and other times when we are forced to remember.

grandpa is dying, and i love him, and i just can't picture heaven, and i didn't want to talk to him. i don't see him every day, so his dying didn't have to be a real thing to me as long as i kept ducking my parent's phone calls. but yesterday was a fiercely cold and heavy day, and my grandpa was moved into a hospice house on the coast of new hampshire where he will spend his last few days, and there was no more time. i buried my face in the warm flannel of my pillowcase and sobbed for a while, and then made the call. it's been almost a year since i've had to do the terrible tearing away of my heart from the things in this world that i love the most. it feels like nausea and hiccups and doom, and i can't feel God in that place. if i am honest, i will tell you that i don't live my days like heaven exists. worse - i don't want to live that way, don't want to feel the pangs and the longing, don't want to remember what can be ripped from my hands.

he may have a few more days, maybe a week. you don't know him, but you would simply love him; a good, good, good man. i'm not sure how to navigate the last few days in a world that will soon not have him in it. sigh. my heart is in the wrong place.