When you are growing up, they're the ones you want to go to for anything and everything. The ones who let you get away with things your parents won't let you say or do. So when the time comes where they pass, you aren't prepared for it and have this feeling of not knowing what to do and being a little lost. No matter how much you think you are prepared to lose a grandparent, you aren't.
Losing a grandparent leaves a giant hole in your heart and your life, that nothing and nobody can repair or replace. It's like suddenly everything shifts. I lost my paternal grandfather in 2009 when I was ten years old, my maternal step-grandfather in 2016 at seventeen years old, and my paternal grandmother in 2017 when I was eighteen years old.
In 2009, my grandfather went to the hospital for a broken hip and ended up passing away unexpectedly from it. Finding out he died was hard on my family. It has been almost ten years now and it's hard for me to remember his voice or laugh.
When my other grandfather died in 2016, it was right before I graduated high school. He and my grammy lived in North Carolina so I didn't get to see them much but I would call and talk to them all the time. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack and when I graduated high school, Grammy brought me a luggage set that he had picked out for me and a card he wrote in for me. I read the graduation card and it just hit me hard that I was graduating high school and he and my grandfather that died in 2009 wouldn't be able to see me walk across the stage.
When my grandmother died in 2017, it was two days before Hurricane Irma hit and when I found out, I think I cried for three hours straight. Her death hit me the hardest because I was super close to her my whole life. Losing her was like losing a piece of myself. Ever since she passed, I have felt lost, alone, confused. It sucks not being able to call her just to talk about my day or randomly come over and spend time with her or make potato salad and peel kiwis together. I was so close to her for so long that her not being here feels like I lost something crucial.
When you lose a grandparent, yes, there's the feeling of being lost and the emptiness, but there's also all the things you wish they could be there to witness that they just won't. High school graduation, serious relationships, going to college, graduating from college, buying a house, getting married, having children. When big moments like these come into your life, you want them there and when you realize they won't get to see these things or be there for them, it's like losing them all over again. With my college graduation coming up, it's starting to hit me more and more each day that gets closer, that only two of my five grandparents will be there to see me walk across the stage and I don't know how to do this without them.
