My Best Friend

This weekend, I traveled home to see my best friend and though the trip makes me sad inside, it is now a tradition that I plan to keep up for as long as possible.

On June 12, it will be exactly two years since my grandpa died, and though I have gone to the cemetery numerous times, it is always hardest around the anniversary of his death.

I went home last weekend because I know I won't have the opportunity to go home Friday. That and the weather was beautiful, if my grandfather were still alive, he would've wanted to sit outside and relax as the world went on around him.

Before moving to Terre Haute permanently, I would go visit about once a week, it sounds morbid and on some levels people would say I'm weird, but I don't care, let them talk. I deal with my grief in a different way, if going to visit him numerous times helps me, then so be it.

You have to understand; I use to spend hours talking to my grandfather about everything going on in my life. So when he died, I had a huge hole that I couldn't fill. Don't get me wrong, I still spent a lot of time with my family, it just wasn't the same.

Whenever I make the drive home, I stop to visit my grandmother. She is usually running around the kitchen cooking something for someone or preparing food to make into dinner the next day. My grandmother is one of those people who tries take care of everyone around her. Even when I go home, I tell her I'm not there to eat, I just want to visit, but she insists on cooking. I think that way she is like Ivy and shows her love is through the food she cooks. I've noticed my grandma cooks much more since my grandpa's death, but as it goes, we all deal with our grief in our own way.

So Saturday morning as I drove past a flower shop, I stopped and bought some yellow roses and I visited my best friend. I told him of all the things going on in my life. I sat on a blanket that is kept in my car and read him the stories that he read to me as a child. I recited his favorite poetry and I cried my tears of sadness. Before I left I told him how much I loved him and miss him.

After all of that, I went home to visit his wife, who wiped away my tears and gave me an apple and a coke. She told me stories about her and my grandpa. Eventually the sadness went away and I smiled again. Who would've thought that my grandpa's best friend would be the one comforting me?

Sometimes with the craziness that has engulfed my family, I forget they are there for those comforting times when I need them most.

"I'm gonna walk with my grand daddy

And he'll match me step for step

And I'll tell him how I missed him

Every minute since he left

Then I'll hug his neck

Yeah when I get where I'm going

There'll be only happy tears

I will shed the sins and struggles

I have carried all these years

And I'll leave my heart wide open

I will love and have no fear

Yeah when I get where I'm going

Don't cry for me down here"