Loss is part of life... great line but when you have to live it, it is a different story...

I lost my dad when I was 6, just a little girl who loved her papa more than any other person on the planet. But I grew up on a little farm with my mom, who was working almost fulltime to feed us, my 6-year older sister, who I had no relationship with as a child but thank god that has changed dramatically, my 10-year older brother who I loved to crawl in bed with and snuggle for another few minutes before getting up, my not-really-grandmother who was on the farm for decades and most likely the girlfriend/wife of my not-really-grandfather but they had separate bedrooms yet lived in the same apartment all their lives.

So in short there were still people around and people that I loved and loved me to various degrees. My grandfather was definitely second in line after my dad. He was a real woodsman. Drank beer every day and so did I at least until I started school. He knew every mushroom and every tree, a kind man to me but his history, which I didn’t learn until a few years ago revealed a cruel side of him and that explained in my head at least, why he had to die such a cruel death. Karma is a bitch and once you start paying attention, it is everywhere in your life. He had stomach cancer and slowly over the course of 2 years, starved to death.

One morning about 6 months before he died my mom went shopping on Saturday morning as she did every week and yelled up the stairs to my grandma that she would leave in about 10 minutes and Barbette, that was her real name, said she would be right down, except that even after another 20 minutes she still wasn’t

downstairs. Mom went up to get her and she was lying dead in front of the door. She had a stroke. The doctor said she had died immediately but I don’t think anybody really knew.

The part that is burned into my head is my grandfather sitting outside in front of our house on the bench that was a staple at every German farmhouse. He was sitting there, next to him was my 12-year old self trying to console him and all he would say over and over was ‘why couldn’t I have died first’ while tears were covering his face, something I had never seen before.

Six months later I am in the kitchen with my mom and I am yelling at her that if she doesn’t bring me to the hospital right now I will run away and get there some other way. I had been begging her for weeks now to let me see my grandfather who I always called Uncle Sepp because in reality he was my mom’s uncle but since he never had children of his own and he needed somebody to take over the farm, my parents moved in shortly after they got married. Mom is trying to talk me out of it. “He really isn’t nice to look at anymore, he lost so much weight and I want you to remember him the way you always knew him”. Here is the deal you can drive me or I will take off, and so she drove me to the hospital which was about 3 miles away and run by nuns. Bitches from hell I would call them. If mom wouldn’t bring them gifts and money they would let my grandfather lie in his own shit for days. Horrible human beings and certainly not the brides of Jesus, more like the sisters of Satan! Uncle Sepp was about 75 pounds when I saw him that day, down from about 200 before he got sick.

He looked the same to me.

His kind eyes were exuberantly happy to see me even though he was in terrible pain. He told me over and over that he wanted to die and I tried to convince him to fight and stay. I told him that I missed him so much and how sad I was to see him go. We talked about death and dying for the next 4-5 hours until they told me that the hospital was closing and I had to leave around 7PM. Please don’t leave me, please fight, please stay...

He died that night...

... I learned that death isn’t scary, it is a part of our life and my memories of that night are filled with love and magic.

Every day for lunch my grandfather and I had a beer together until I started school at age 6.