Dear grandma, (Adjusted Book Teaser)

Dear grandma,

Sometimes I do think that some people are born with a heart full of love. That not even the greatest storm or the worst fear can change the fact that those people carry a light in them.

You were one of those people.

Every year marks a day that this cruel world took you, one of my favourite people, from me.

And it is not fair.

It is not fair that this world full of hatred and war and pain takes this wonderful light, the light that made people’s lives better.

You were the light in that endless darkness.

And you were my guardian, like a compass you always pushed me on the right way of life.

Even though I have learned that there is not a right or a wrong way of life.

You were my anchor in this thunderstorm.

My steadiness from the rages of my family or my self-destructive episodes.

You were everything I had and everything I needed.

And now you are gone.

The day I lost you, was the day I lost myself.

I gave up a part of myself.

Not voluntarily, it seems like you just took it with you.

The day it happened; I woke up from the noise of grief.

Most people would think grief is silent, the praying people, the minute’s silence for the dead.

But it isn’t.

Actually, grief is the loudest noise that exists in this world.

It is almost like it is screaming right into your face, so I knew something was wrong.

I expected that I would run, but I didn’t.

I even went slower, perhaps in the hope that I could stop and turn back the time in those extra seconds.

And then I was there, in this stupid little living room.

I asked what was wrong, I had seen the tears.

The wording might be blurry in my memory, but I will never forget the content.

It was the words that made the time freeze, the words that shot through my heart like an arrow and took away that piece of mine.

The words that blocked the control of my body and which led to the most heart-breaking scream from my lungs.

It was those words that stole every bit of air and let me sink down to the floor.

It is not grief that is silent, it is your consciousness.

You know that the person is gone but still, the consciousness stays silent.

It does not tell you.

It just leaves you sitting under the shower without any emotions where your tears mix up with the water.

It leaves you calm when you look up to the sky and pray for a sign, leaves you quiet when you look at the stone with the engraved name and ask for the sense.

But especially it builds up a balance to the inner screaming.

This peaceful silence.

It repairs the hole in your heart and replaces the piece you have lost.

Temporarily.

It keeps you in balance until one of those feelings wants to dominate, then the fight begins.

You start screaming, you start remaining silent.

You scream, rage, yell and you hide, disappear, flee.

And you notice how you lose yourself more and more.

How other pieces of yourself want to follow the first piece.

You are destroying yourself.

But as soon as you realize, something happens.

Your consciousness reacts.

It decides and that decision contains a refusion of self-destruction.

You rise and try to move on.

You try to replace that lost piece by yourself.

And it may fail.

On the first attempt and also on the second and third.

Again, and again.

But at some point, it will work.

At one point that self-repaired hole will unite with the rest.

It will become one.

The reason might be not explainable but maybe that is the sign you were looking for.

Because grandma, the day I found myself again, I did also find you again.

It scares me that someday my children will experience something similar when I die.

Or my love.

I don’t want that.

I don’t want them to suffer over something you can’t change.

Throw a goddamn party when I die and celebrate my life.

I want them to laugh whenever they speak of me, not cry.

I truly believe that I’m not gone when I die.

I know that heaven might be a myth, but I like the thought of it.

Being gone but not really.

If someone would ask me where to find me, I would say that they should look in the east for me.

Look for me in the sunrises.

Dear grandma,

not a single day has passed where I didn't look for you.

Now I realize I looked at the wrong places.

It is not your hometown, not the sunsets, not the waves of the ocean.

Well, sometimes it is.

I just had to look in the mirror.

Look at the features you gave me, your ever-lasting present for me.

Such a long search for such a short distance.

Now I know that I do carry you with me.

Every. Single. Day.

In my heart, in my veins, in my head.

I live a life for the two of us until we see each other again and make the East shine extra bright every morning.