Formspring is a website where people ask you anonymous questions and you answer them.  For some it’s a place to be funny, but for me, apparently, it’s become my True Calling; people have been asking me all kinds of Serious Shit.  So I figured since I don’t update this enough, I will post some answers I’ve given to questions.  I think this one is a good start because it might as well be a blog post all its own.

Also if you want to ask questions, do not hesitate!  I answer every single one of them.  http://www.formspring.me/zornog

Oh yeah I have that little widget to the left too I forgot about that.  Anyway!

how do you deal with loss?

I tend to get very stoic. This is a trait, I think, that I inherited from my mother. I’ve been very lucky in that not very many people close to me have died, save for my grandpa and grandma. My grandpa Jack had a very unexpected stroke when I was young. Jack was a busy guy, he owned horses and a small ranch, and was always working. He had served in WWII as an engineer in Australia, building bridges. He severed the tip of one of his fingers and I remember he had what looked to me to be a bit of bone that stuck out of his finger. I always thought that was awesome.

One day he had the stroke and fell off a ladder he was on at the time. We went to the hospital and learned that his entire left side (I think it was left, I’m not too sure) was paralyzed. It devastated him, a man who would get up early to feed the horses, to be bedridden, and I remember the days soon after were spent with his surliness and anger. It scared the shit out of me, the whole thing: to be struck down, to be bedridden. I couldn’t understand when he spoke, and that frustrated him even more. I wouldn’t say I was particularly close to my grandpa, but we were still family, and it was hard to deal with it. So I think I entered Defense Mode and just shut those emotions off for a while.

After a year or so Jack’s viewpoint changed, he mellowed out and did physical therapy and regained a bit of his left side and became relatively happy again. He was still mostly bedridden, though he did sometimes walk with a walker. He seemed to find a new happiness in this different world, and we were happy for him.

A few years later, he died, and we had a memorial, and I remember being very stoic about the whole thing, probably because I was too young.

And then some odd years later (ten? twelve?) my grandma died, after a lot of complications with diabetes which eventually took both her legs. The truth is that she likes candy and sugary things and kept eating them even after everyone said You Must Stop, You Have Diabetes. I can’t say I blame her — she was old and did what she damn well pleased. You get that luxury when you’re old.

Anyway she died and I was stoic then too. Went to the funeral and was sad but kept it down.

Then a few days later, maybe a week, maybe a month, we had a big party at my house in Boise. I had a girlfriend at the time (the same one who gave me the Loser Cat), and it was a fun shindig, and I drank a lot and made an ass out of myself, as I usually do.

As it got later my GF and I opted to go to bed (bed bed, not sex bed). And as we laid in my bed at around two in the morning, a very strange, very unexpected thing happened.

I bawled my eyes out. I laid there, drunk and sloppy, while my teenaged girlfriend probably thought I was a big old loser, and I bawled and bawled and said in hiccuping sobs how much I missed my grandmother. I must’ve done this for at least a half an hour. God bless you, teenaged girlfriend (at the time), for putting up with me.

When I woke up the next day, I felt like a weight had been lifted from me. It wasn’t closure, but it was close.

… That’s not really an answer. Everyone handles loss differently. But there must be catharsis. There must be release. Anger, sadness, whatever. Time of course heals all wounds, but not if you keep picking at the scab.

Anyway, I hope that was … something. Sorry for being so long-winded!