Dark Stuff...read with caution

I am in a really weird mindset this morning. Let me explain...

One of Jeff's good family friends recently died from Leukemia. He was an amazing man and it was very sad to hear of his passing, but reassuring to know he was no longer in pain. I get updates from his wife on their caring bridge page. Her post that I just read this morning spoke of how many things were left undone that now have to be taken care of. Something in the way she spoke about it triggered a flashback to my own grandfather's death five years ago. The difference in the situations being that this man had no desire to leave his family and this Earth and my grandfather took his own life.

It's hard when I hear stories about how people are at the end and their family and friends gather around and are able to say good-bye and reminisce about old memories. I didn't get that chance. I had no idea the night I went to sleep on January 15, 2004 would be the last time I would see my grandfather alive. For so many years I have tried to create reasons or excuses for why someone would do something so selfish. I thought maybe he had a medical condition that would be do debilitating he didn't want to force my grandmother to take care of him, or that maybe he thought she would be better off with money instead of him. But over the years as I have grown older and have been exposed to more passings of friends and family, it really is becoming harder and harder to accept the reality that whatever the reason, he had a choice. He had a choice of whether or not to pull that trigger. He had a choice of whether or not to leave his family. He made his choice without anyone but himself in mind.

I try not to be bitter or resentful about it because it taints the good memories I have of growing up with him and experiencing all of the things in life he showed me, like how to hunt, and fish, and bait a hook, and shoot a target. But when he made that choice, he also made the choice to miss out on all of the things to come. He made a choice to not be at my wedding. He made a choice to miss my college graduation, and my brother and sister and cousin's high school graduations. He made a choice not to be here to meet his first great-grandchild. He made those choices, yet he is not the one that carries around the burden of those choices. He left his family to do his dirty work for him, and that is the part that hurts me the most, and has taken me the longest to accept. If he would have truly been doing any of this "for us", he wouldn't have done it in the first place.