Flashback

So I am sitting here at my parents' computer and Katrina, the gray/brown tabby is sitting in front of the monitor. I moved the window to the side enough so I can see what I am typing. She is so precious. She sits with her tail curled in front of her paws and looks very content. I have Coldplay on in the background.

I stopped here on my way home from my boyfriend's house. I stayed at his parents' house Tuesday and Wednesday night. It was nice to be away and to be able to spend time with my boyfriend on his days off. He is so much fun to be around. I know I might be repeating myself, but I could never say these things enough. I feel so strongly that I will never tire when it comes to telling him what he means to me. He has this innate ability to make me laugh and I value it so much. Laughter is something I definitely need in my life- I am often stressed out.

Last night my boyfriend's grandfather mentioned he was going to the oncologist today for test results. I ended up having a flashback to when I took my grandfather to the VA for his test results. I can remember clearly the look on his face while we were in that office and got the news. His cancer had spread to various organs and they told him he needed chemo. I had spent a lot of the summer transporting him to doctors and helping him out around the condo. I was really getting to know him and was becoming closer to him than I had ever been. He even told me that I was a great granddaughter. When someone says a statement like that, it really means a lot. It was devastating to find out the bad news and even more devastating to have to spend my final days with him in the hospital. His chemo had made him susceptible to pneumonia, and the pneumonia was what ended up killing him. I went back and forth from extreme grief to numbness. I do not know if I grieved in a healthy manner or if my numbness put a hold on things. Every time I tried to talk about it in therapy, the pain was too much to bear and I ended up telling Jeanne that I couldn't talk about it anymore. Last night, I felt the pain pretty bad again- like a wound that had been reopened. As I wrote in a poem dedicated to him: "You'd say life is hard, well it certainly is hard without you here."