At least my writer's block is cured.

Here's to my “family” who attended their father’s and grandfather’s funeral.  It must have been so depressing to sit there at a man’s funeral that you barely acknowledged while he was alive. It must have been so hard to go see him at the ICU the maybe 3 times in 6 months you managed to pull away from your busy lives to go see him.  I bet it was even harder to respect his views and respects about viewings and funerals and go buy a nice shirt and pants with your over 20 dollar an hour paying job " that’s why you, his son, wore ripped up jeans, a backwards hat, and an eagles shirt .  It must have been even harder for the grandchildren who saw him less than his children or never had a full conversation with him to deal with their “great” lost.  It probably wasn't the attention or sympathy that a 17 year old girl would receive from posting all over Facebook about how much she “missed” her grandfather that urged her towards posting all that.

It’s okay though, because as you got to say many times afterwards " it’s all over for us now. Except little do you understand or care to understand, it has just begun for the people in this household. The grieving process has just started for the 7 residents of this house that is haunted in every crease and crack. Where the man who lived here has left his mark on every single aspect of this house and has imprinted himself on the 7 people in this house that no matter how hard we try to scrub our hearts or souls of him, it will never be cleansed of him.  You get to walk with your heads held high and go along with your lives as they had never been touched as we each look ourselves in the mirror and beg ourselves to pull it together, just f*****g pull it together and keep going.  None of you will see this aftermath.

You won’t see the woman you put everything on bundle into a ball on the couch, staring a blank TV screen, because she is terrified to even attempt to sleep in the same bed where he slept beside her every night for the last 25 years. You won’t hear her at night crying out that she is so sorry that she couldn't save him.  You won’t see that woman’s daughter covering her depression with anger and then isolating in her room, not wanting to accept that he is really gone and realizing the resentment she has towards her relationship with her step-father. You also won’t hear her secretly crying at night when she thinks nobody is listening on nights you think will never end. You won’t see that woman’s oldest daughter trying to comfort her mother and grandmother, burying herself in her “fur children “, trying to focus her mind on keeping so busy with work, school, and her boyfriend so the mind numbing thoughts don’t come flying back, making her as much as a wreck as everybody else. You won’t witness the woman’s youngest child and son, actually turning of his computer and laying there with a pillow and blanket over his bed, wondering when his family is going to pull back together and then the next chilling thought " what if we never pull ourselves back together? You won’t watch as his bottom lip quivers just the slightest when he’s asked if he’s okay, for him to try to be a “man” and say yeah, rushing off before he has time to go back on that answer. You won’t be there to watch as the only other male of the house now, the grandmother’s nephew messages me, a 17 year old girl, telling me that he’s freaking out and wants to relapse on drugs more than anything. You won’t witness tears fall down his face, for the first time I’ve ever seen in my life, as I talk to him outside chain-smoking cigarettes. You won’t watch as I tell him that I need him with my own tears in my eyes, because he’s the most stable at this point and he’s the only one I can depend on to help me through this since everybody in the house has distanced their selves so far you aren't sure you can reach them even if you screamed.  You won’t watch them make a silent agreement to depend on each other, because how the hell are you supposed to do this on your own? And you sure the hell won’t see or understand and how a 3 year old seems to understand crystal clear what is going on as he runs around, hugging everybody and telling them “It’s okay buddy.”

The last thing on Earth you’ll see is me, a 17 year old girl, writing this and praying to any God out there that will listen that all those countless coping skills I learned over years and years of therapy will actually work and I won’t take the sharpest object and stab it into me or become a substance trash can so I can numb the thoughts. You won’t see me trying to run away to my friend’s house and returning, because I can’t keep avoiding the problem like I attempted to while the only grandfather I knew was in the hospital for months, because now they are staring me right in the face and commanding that they be addressed right this instance.  I’ll hide how much I want to yell and cuss you all out for the stress and disrespect you showed my family and your father/grandfather. I have to hide from telling two of his other grandchildren, two boys that show no respect for the law or people, that they are the biggest pieces of scum " one of you got out of a rehabilitation jail setting so you could see your grandfather at his funeral and the two of you are planning how long this will take so you can go off and have fun.  This is just a small event you have to deal with so you can go off and have some fun out of jail. I have to resist the urge to punch one of my grandfather’s daughters in the face, because as soon as she got the news that her father passed away she is focused on getting her scum of a son out of jail and instead of offering condolences to her step mother she blows up everybody’s phone in this household to ask the exact time and date the funeral will be so she can get “Bubba” out of jail. She interrupts us making funeral arrangements by constantly making our phones ring and when she gets what she wants she makes a nice little joke over text, “I hope Bubba and his girlfriend get some alone time (; hehehehe.”  Then she throws a fit that my mother made all the arrangements even though we constantly asked her input which in return got the same answer, “Whatever you want to do, I support you in whatever you choose.” Little did she fail to realize that my mother was just making the phone calls for her 62 year old mother who is exhausted from months and months of waking up at 6AM, taking a three year old to school, going to work until 6 or 7 at night and then sitting in a hospital room watching the man she loves wither away into nothing until midnight " repeating this process every day.  And it’ll take a lot to hide the embarrassment and shame I feel for the girl who is my age that wanted to cause drama between her aunts so she started telling one of them that her other sisters were talking about her and her son, “Bubba” which resulted in causing more drama and problems for my exhausted 62 year old grandmother.

But it’s okay right? You won’t ever see and probably will never hear of the aftermath of what is happening in this household. It’s finally all over for you even though you never gave a care in the world about this male, even though you will act like you do so you can all get sympathy.  It’s okay, because you won’t second glance older men, thinking that you saw his face nor will you hear his voice ringing through your head clear as day. You won’t feel the pain and anguish of people who weren’t blood related to this man, but were more of a family than you will ever be to him. You won’t curl in fetal position in the middle of the night, crying yourself to sleep and you won’t wake up in a pool of cold sweat because you dreamt of him again. You won’t starve yourself, because food is the last thing on your mind and you won’t have to force yourself to eat food that tastes bland, because you need food to live. You won’t watch you family fall into a million pieces and I don’t think you’re going to be the people who try to put it back together.