Losing Someone Dear

Last night my dad, sister, and I had dinner at Grandma Loopy’s. He worked very hard to make sure everything was just right. We got coffee from a great coffee place – black, just the way she lakes it. We got pizza from a really great pizza place, and my dad bought her flowers. Now, I’ve never understood why anybody would want to buy a vase full of dying foliage and give it to a loved one as a gift, but I do know what it’s supposed to mean. We had a nice dinner together, and then we left, and not two minutes after we left, she was on the phone to my mother, asking when her son would be there with dinner.

My father was devastated. He couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten everything he’d done for her birthday. I think he’s still in denial. He talks to her every day – before he visits her. He calls her to tell her he’s on his way. I’m not really sure why he does this, because she will invariably go on doing whatever she’s doing, and not remember that he called. My mother thinks the reason she calls looking for him directly after a visit is that she’s still think about him when he’s left – she just can’t remember why.

She also crapped herself at the dinner table last night, but I was the only one close enough to smell it. So I just moved to a further chair. I didn’t have the heart to tell my father.

I had a dream about N/A last night. I don’t even know what to make of it. I was calling her on the phone from a department store. I think it was Christmas, and I’d gotten her a gift, or was trying to get her a gift. When I heard her voice, she told me she had a son.

“You have a son?” I gasped, trying to sound excited and not devastated. “What’s his name?”

“T.V.V.” a response I couldn’t make sense of.

“Stevie V.?”

“Teavey V.”

I think I realized at that moment that she was really gone. She had her own life now.

Maybe I’m thinking about her because I saw her in a photo on facebook the other day – just some random photo that a male Torontonian friend of mine – my only remaining link to her – was also in. There was another girl in the photo too. They were all really drunk, and all really happy. I liked that, but it’s still painful to see her again. She never drank while we dated, and I always wondered what she’d be like when she really cut loose. I guess I’ll never really know.