Sunrise Sunset

Today, Monday July 28th, my wonderful partner Mira resumed work at her chosen profession, and I took over as full time Dad at home, caring for our 1 year old son Teague. I am tired. I am not tired as a result of some trite explanation that one might expect from the male/female dichotomy and neophyte father, such as, "Now he realizes how hard it is to be at home! I bet he never expected it to be so tough!" No, the reason I'm tired is because my Grandmother (on my Mom's side) died last night. Mira and I were already in bed when the phone rang at 10:30 PM, and I thought, then, of the saw, "Good news always sleeps 'till noon", and though we tried to ignore the alarum, the ringing re-started several times in a row, which we knew could not be a good sign, and so Mira ran down to the phone. It was my Mom, crying and informing us that my 102 year old Grandmother had just passed away that night, a few hours back. At 102, we weren't totally shocked by this news, but I was sad and deflated by my Mom's information, as I had been quite close to my Grandma for many years beforehand. I did not cry on the phone with my Mom, and wondered if I might be strangely inured to grief or tragedy, but as soon as I hung up the phone and Mira reached out and enfolded me in her arms, I broke down in tears. And so I spent a complicated night on the telephone with various airlines, most of whom informed me that they had no bereavement fares, and could do no better than $1000 for a flight to my Grandma's hometown, and anyway not ONE airline could get me to my destination before the final viewing of her body, which had to be kind of quick, since they weren't doing any kind of enbalming or anything My Grandma wanted, as per her instructions, to be cremated quickly without ceremony, and so most family couldn't get there in time for the next day's viewing. Can't blame her there. I think of my Grandpa's funeral (her husband) with morbid recall, seeing the embalmed and makeup-ed corpse as a 10 year old boy and my Grandma commanding me to kneel and pay respects with by other siblings, crying and not really understanding this deathly tableua.

Anyway, hope for more jovial posts in the future