And still, life goes on

//written in the 5th of October

Life has a tendency to go all over the place, just when you think you have it under control it makes a sudden turn, flips upside down and grins at you mischievously - "Ha, how's that?" it asks, proud of itself for leaving you so out of breath. Just when you thought you had it all figured out! When you're most vulnerable, life will do the unexpected. Something you would've never thought could happen, like getting assaulted at your close friend's living room. Like your supposed friend stealing money from you. Like your lovely, lively, active grandpa suddenly falling ill and, all too soon, lying in his deathbed due to gastric cancer. Life, man. What a thing it is, oh my. 

I don't even know what to say at this point - I really did think I had most of everything figured out for a while. At least for a small while, like a week! I had my finals barely behind me, they went fairly well, I think, and I thought life would settle down and allow the tides to calm down after what I felt was a massive storm. Little did I know there was a tsunami incoming, haha. My grandpa really is dying. He does indeed have gastric cancer. He's going to die. And, uh, I don't know what to say about it... It's too raw for me to really write about my feelings in detail at the moment, since my heart feels like a fragile little sand castle; give it a little push and it'll all fall apart. 

I've been crying every single day. The moment I heard there's a tumour in his stomach, even before we were sure it was cancer, there's been this weight in the pit of my stomach, this uneasy feeling of upcoming loss. Like preparing for a disaster, and dreading every second of it. It's the sadness of death, of loss. When dad gave us the news, we all started trying to accept his death. Of course it's against my very nature to ever stop hoping, ahaha... But I couldn't help but understand the weight of the situation, how likely it was for him to die. And yet... Even though at this point I'm 99.9 % sure he is soon gone, there's that 0.1 % that's probably doing me more harm than good.

On Monday dad came home crying. I've only ever seen my dad cry once before, at my other grandpa's funeral. We don't cry, we don't show emotion like that. Oh, except for me of course, haha... I'm too weak and sensitive to survive through life dry-eyed. But I digress. He came home, and he was crying. So I knew. I didn't even have to see his face, I could hear the tears in his voice. Grandpa was very, very ill. Not dead yet, but close... Against all odds he survived, though, but from that moment on he has been attached to machinery and tubes. I traveled there by train on Tuesday, and saw him then and on Wednesday, too. I can't possibly describe right now what it was like meeting him. It gave a harsh reminder of how much I love him, and how much we'll lose. That was probably the last time I'll ever see him, since despite the cytostatics and possible chemotherapy, I'm skeptical... He's very fragile and old, and such a massive tumour, connected to many different organs like his liver, so that they can't even operate on it.. It doesn't sound too promising.

So yeah, that's happening. I've been crying pretty much every day since we heard about the tumour a couple of weeks ago, simply because I know what's ahead of us and I know how hard and sad it'll be. Death isn't a new thing to me, but it's always, always so hard... But such is life, and such is the cost of loving. The pain shows that you cared, the more you hurt, the more you loved. And for someone like me who is maybe a bit too intense about love, who loves so much that she might cry for inanimate objects, loss is a struggle. I love so, so damn much. I love him, and the idea that he'll be gone, that he'll never be here anymore, that I'll never hear the sound of his morning slippers or his laughter ever again, that he can't tell his fun stories, that he can't paint his goddamn fences and work at his cottage and see his siblings, that he's gone, once and for all, hurts so much. The fact that it's just the end for him, that his life gets cut so abruptly, that he's not able to continue living and flourishing... It's horrible. It's... life (or I guess death to be more precise lol). And of course, I feel so much pain for my dad as well, it's his own father we're talking about... I can't possibly imagine what he's going through, even though grandpa is old and this was kind of expected to happen at one point or the other, but still. Losing a parent must be horrible. 

When I was a kid, I used to think I'd much rather die before my family members did, simply because the idea of losing one of them felt too painful. Such selfish kid logic, lol. After that, I was sure we'd all die at the same time. Maybe in a crash, maybe in some sort of plane accident, so that it'd be quick, and no one would have to suffer... I honestly thought I wanted it to go like that, all of us at the same time so that no one would be left behind. At some point I did get over it, though - one thing that helped me was the realization of everyone having to go through the loss of their parents, or at least that's how it should be. The old die to give room to the young, such is nature. And that helped me overcome the fear of losing my parents, thinking about how every old person has gone through that loss and survived, and so would I. 

//written in the 17th of October

Alright, grandpa's condition has improved a lot after writing the first part of this post. He's doing much better now, although it's obvious he's not on clear waters yet - there's still a large possibility that he'll die. No one just knows when or how anymore. He's starting on cytostatics really soon, he got released from the hospital and put into a smaller, private home close to where he lives. He actually got to go home for a couple of days, and apparently, all went very well. He's able to eat a bit (soft foods like porridge, mostly), and doesn't need constant supervision, so obviously he's a bit more stable at the moment. Still, no one knows what's next. They're trying to stop the growth of the tumour and hopefully make it a bit smaller, so that they could possibly operate on it in the future. So there's a tiny flicker of hope, although I guess we shouldn't cling onto that too much... After all, there's a large possibility that this will still be the end of him. He has gained some weight, but he's still an old man, weak and fragile and might not be able to handle the cytostatics. We call them "cell poison".

I'm not sure what to say about this whole situation, really. We've known about the tumour for a month or so, so obviously we've been able to adapt to the situation already - and frankly, I'm not as sad as I was two weeks ago. Perhaps it's because the most critical situation seems to have passed, or maybe I coped with it already. I cried quite a lot, pretty much every night, and thought about loss so much that I started getting tired of it after a while, haha... Does this sound cruel? I'm not sure if it does. There's nothing we can do anymore, so it's better to just wait and see, and try to accept whatever outcome. Oh yeah, and I've felt so heartless for still remaining happy and positive even though my own grandpa has been in a hospital, close to death. But I feel that it's better to keep on living even though someone's dying, it's alright to be sad and feel down, to cry and to cope in whichever way you happen to do it, but life will continue. And it's no use mourning yet, there's no one to mourn. He's not gone yet. I'm not sure if he'll be gone, it's possible, but he's not there yet.

Now we're just playing the waiting game.