I started this blog post months ago, on January 23. It was too painful to finish then, but I've returned to it now. It's never too late to finish what you started, and this was something worth releasing, no matter the timeline.
Hi. I'm back. Not sure who still reads this, if you do, thank you.
I wasn't sure when my next blog post was going to be, especially because I didn't have a great big audience I needed to cater to. But one of my readers, one of my biggest supporters, one of my believers, has sadly moved on to the next life. My grandfather... my Sabba, Richard Couzens. This post is for him.
I long to write so badly in these heartbreaking and saddening times, but how can I write when I am not sure what I even want to say. That I am sad that he's gone? Please, I can't just say that. There is simply too many thoughts, too many feelings, too many tears to even begin to explain everything I have experienced within the past month. However, to keep it in won't do me any good either, and I know he wouldn't want that. So, here it goes...
I arrived in Margate, NJ on Thursday night, January 5th. I remember looking at him for the first time. I was with my sister, Sarah, and her husband, Jon. My Sabba was only an essence of who he was just a couple weeks prior. His cheeks were sunken in, as he laid on the hospice bed, directly next to the one that he slept in with my Safta just days beforehand. His full head of silver hair that survived through chemo finally succombed to its destiny, only a few strands remained on his head. Looking at him like that, I could only keep it together for so long. Sarah left the room, and I began to weep uncontrollably. Jon comforted me to the best of his ability, but I was simply inconsolable. After a few moments, Jon left the room to leave me alone with Sabba. I sat next to him, gasping for breath through my tears. I can't remember the last time I cried like that.
Sabba was awake then. His eyes were closed and he could barely get a word out, but he was awake. Though subtle, he reacted to my tears. I could tell that with his limited ability, by the way he was holding my hand, and the look on his face, he was trying his best to comfort me. I remember before I left the room, he didn't look in pain physically, but I could only imagine how much my tears hurt him.
The man who was days away from death was the one trying to comfort me. He was just that kind of person.
So here we were. My family, both immediate and extended, were here in this beach town in the middle of winter. The town we used to come to on family vacations to visit my grandparents. A town where we would get ice cream and go on summer night Wawa runs, and get sunburnt on summer vacation. And it led up to this moment. I can't remember the last time all of us were here at once. I remember staring at the ocean waves, and thinking of the dichotomy of it all. We were all in a haze, a fog, and it would only begin to pass once the time came.
The next 9 days were some of the most emotionally draining and challenging I've experienced. Each day we would be waiting for the inevitable. None of us knew exactly when it would happen, the hospice nurses would say it could be hours, it could be days, a week or two at the very most. Each time you visited him you didn't know if it was going to be your last. I wanted to cry throughout it all, and while at points I did, I have never repressed tears like I did during this week.
My Safta is an emotional woman, it is one of her many strengths, but it acts as her greatest struggle as well. Within these circumstances, it took everything in her to just go through the motions of this new reality. My cousins, even my father and his siblings, knew we needed to stay strong for her. Treading lightly around her existence, watching our volume, watching our words, trying to take up the least amount of space as possible within her small condo that she had to fit her 2 children, their spouses, and her ten grandchildren in during the day. For the amount of life within that apartment, the only thing we could think about was death.
I remember returning to the apartment Jon, Sarah, and I were staying in a couple blocks away (belonging to my grandparents' friends), and before I went to bed, I would release what I was holding back the whole day. I would cry in this unfamilar space that I was forced to sleep in, because my grandfather was dying any day now. Before bed, I thought about how I would have to live my life once his ended, how he will never get to meet my husband, or my children. He will never see what will happen in my career, in which he believed so wholeheartedly in. I thought about it all. How everyone deals with this grief. How is it possible that everyone can feel this amount of pain and how do we all survive it? I still don't know. I never will.
Sabba passed away around 4am on Monday morning, January 9th. Safta woke up next to him and realized he was gone. I got the call from Sarah around 6am, I knew what it was for, there was no other reason she would be calling from down the hall at that hour.
What people don't tell you about the day someone passes, is that it is filled with logistics. You make tons of calls to make tons of arrangements and speak to tons of people all while you're in mourning. You discuss finances, you discuss what food you want for after the burial, so on and so forth. Sarah dealt with most of it, thank God. The whole process seemed... insensitive, like, you're in disbelief that this is the order of operations of how things go when someone you love just passed away a few hours ago. But unfortunately, that's how it must be. A funeral does not get created out of thin air, you must be the one to do it, no matter how demoralizing it is.
The funeral would be held the next day.
The funeral took place on January 10. The last time I attended a funeral was years ago, probably when I was a kid.
I went from Margate, to Yardley, to Philadelphia, and then back to Margate all within the same day. I was an idiot and didn't pack an appropriate funeral outfit when leaving my apartment in New York. Isn't that such a weird thought? To go someplace, needing to consider what to wear for someone's ultimate passing. You leave with your life one way and need to prepare for it to be different once you return. For someone to no longer be in this world with you. I drove with my parents back to Yardley to get the correct clothes to bury my grandfather in. It is so strange to be human.
We arrived at the funeral home and the service began. I remember us deciding who will and won't speak at the funeral. Who wants to and who would prefer to not. Only three of us offered. Some of us were on the fence. I knew it wasn't going to stay that way.
Almost everyone in my family spoke. Basically what I figured would happen. He was too big of a loss to have things left unsaid. You stand in front of a room in your rawest form. Your most vulnerable state. The version of yourself that only empty rooms get to experience. Through swollen, red, puffy eyes and in between gasps of breath where a lump has made a new home in your throat, you try to articulate your relationship with a loved one within two minutes or less. It's an impossible task, yet you try because the person you loved is worth it.
No matter how painful, the love present was undeniable. Perhaps one of the purest experiences of being human is the pain we endure for the sake of love.
After the burial people were invited to come back to Margate for the reception. It really did seem like a celebration of his life. It wasn't filled with tears and somberness. It was filled with the happiness of the life he lived. My cousins and I were all together for the first time in years. The grief of the past 10 days bonded us in a way nothing else could. For those 10 days, we were the only people we could rely on. It was filled with the hope that Sabba is now at peace.
I write this 8 months later and I still cry, but I know I've survived it all. My first major loss. It is so tragically inescapable, yet it is proof of how much love we are capable of. To know that it is all temporary, and to still allow it to consume you. It is worth every minute of grief.
When I first created my blog, Sabba emailed me, telling me how proud he was and that my first two posts were "marvelous." I cry when I think about how much he believed in me. When I'm going through a hard time with my confidence I think of him. When I worry myself too easily I think of him and how he told me to not stress so much, how it isn't good for me. How lucky I am to have his voice in my head when I need him.
I write this now during a point in my life where I feel as if I am swimming against current. I feel as if I am trapped in a wind tunnel fighting against the direction I am being blown. Like I am treading water, barely keeping my head above the surface. Everytime you think life is slowing down, it picks right back up again and spins you around, just for you to try and regain your balance once again. And the cycle repeats itself.
Maybe I will unpack my most recent events in a separate post, but I wanted to include this depiction of the current state of my life, because I really do like to believe that he is watching me throughout it all. Telling me not to cry. To not stop believing in myself. To not worry about what will become of me. Because it will all make sense in the end. You are exactly where you need to be. Even if feels like the most unnatural, uncomfortable, unfamiliar place, you will eventually find home. You won't feel lost forever. God and your guardian angels simply won't allow it.
