the morning after


in the immortal words of marty mcfly, last week was "heavy". an unexpected accident results in tragedy. thinking back, i can't really remember something akin to last week since the death of my mom's dad almost fifteen years ago. my granddaddy fell victim to a heart attack. he didn't have serious health problems and his passing was every bit as surprising as gerry's. i know i reacted to his death differently. i grieved differently. i remember thinking it was weird that i couldn't muster up a tear to save my life at his wake and funeral. as destroyed as my mother was and even my younger brother brian (who was much closer to him than i) to a lesser degree, i knew i was supposed to be upset. i was supposed to be crying. i just couldn't. not to say that i wasn't upset. i was. it just didn't rip me apart like i felt like it should have. maybe i internalized the whole thing. i don't know. the reason i bring this up was that last week and dealing with gerry's death felt very similar. when i heard the news from donna sunday morning, i told her that i was glad to have heard before i arrived, because i could get my crying out in the car on the way to church. but the tears never came. i wanted to cry along with rick and the choir members wiping away their bleeding mascara, but i suppose it just wasn't time to do that for me. when i shared the news with sarah, i could hear in her voice how upset she was, and i wondered why i couldn't be that obvious with my sense of loss. what was going on with me?

what was it about the death of peggy ferrara that made me boo-hoo like a little girl? in the grand scheme of things, if i were to rank the important people in my life, peggy would've have been on the list, but my granddaddy would've been higher. gerry would have been much higher. was it that she checked on me every time she walked past my office on the way to hers? was it that she claimed me as one of her own? i don't know. but i remember feeling like i couldn't turn it off at her memorial service. no matter how hard i tried to hold back my emotion, it just kept coming in waves. i remember the awkward look on my dad's face that day as i turned and saw him. he comforted me the only way he knew how, but i don't think he got it. i don't know if i get it.

last week was weird for me in that i kept waiting for the "wave" to hit me. i thought that writing about him last wednesday would be the tipping point, but it wasn't. it was cathartic, but no tears. what was going on with me? i still didn't understand. i still don't. did i internalize this too? swallow it up, unknowingly, only for it to hit me one day while listening to sports talk radio in the car and having to pull over because i am a blubbering fool (this has only happened to me once.).

i am not big on crying. a lot of people know this. it's not something macho like "real men don't cry" or anything like that. it's just that i like to be in control, and somewhere along the years i decided that crying meant you weren't in control. maybe you're not. maybe that's the point. i don't know. for as long as i can remember, i have only "lost control" in this regard one time. at peggy's funeral. i know i loved peggy, but not like i loved gerry. not like i loved granddaddy. maybe something hit me during that service and i gave myself permission to let 20 some-odd years worth of hurt out all at one time. who knows.

i felt better about all this last thursday at gerry's memorial service. because sometime during the beautiful service, the "wave" hit me. my eyes welled up. my throat started to close and my stomach started to cramp. if i hit the "go" button, i could've done the blubbering fool thing right then and there. but i didn't. i don't know why exactly. maybe i wanted to be strong for sarah who was already borderline blubbering fool herself. maybe it just wasn't time for me to let another few years worth of hurt out. maybe because if i had pressed the "go" button, it would've been about something more than him, and i didn't want it to be. gerry no longer being around caused the "wave" that i had been waiting for. i'll deal with the rest later. rest in peace, gerry.

it's time to move back to the more trivial.

maybe next time, i can tell you (again) about what a complete and utter failure as a basketball coach mark gottfried is.

or we can talk about "the jesus tomb".

or maybe talk about how i can't wait to see the new david fincher movie about a serial killer.

we'll see.