This is not a standard post. It is not meant to be a comedic entry in any way. It contains far more explicit language than I have ever used on this blog. It is the brutally vivid and uncompromisingly honest retelling of my stream of consciousness during the events that caused my blog to go on hiatus. This entry, more so than anything I ever written in my life, is incredibly personal and undescribably dear to me.
As such, if you are a casual reader of this blog and do not know me very well, I would suggest skipping this entry. However, if you do consider yourself a friend of mine, then I would greatly appreciate that you do read this blog. Because it is unquestionably the most emotional piece I have ever written.
**END***OF***WARNING***
I was never known for being a consistent blogger, but it's been 55+ days since my last post, and that's not normal. In all honesty, I had no clue if, let alone when, I was ever going to blog again. But this past weekend, in-between an amazing Muse concert and an awesome night of fun in downtown Cleveland, I found myself in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with an absolutely incredible girl who has a penchant for unwittingly being involved in some of the more memorable moments of my life. And it was there, first floor, two benches from the left, sitting across from gigantic prop speakers and live replays of the music that shaped so many lives, that I finally talked about a few snippets of the following information. But the effects of that admission, combined with the rest of the weekend's events, snowballed into an incredibly emotion drive home down I-90, and the realization that now is the time to do this entry, as well as so much more. So without any further intro, the blog entry.
Tuesday, January 22nd, I stopped by Aunt Annie's house to hangout with her, her kids, and my cousin and her boyfriend that were visiting from Colorado. They were going to be in town for two weeks and we were all going to have an awesome time together. I was on my way out, and as I yelled goodbye to my aunt, I think she yelled back "Later Matt." I can't really remember.
Thursday, January 24th, my aunt stopped by the hospital. She had kidney stones the past week, and was still feeling a bit tired from them, so she figured she'd get it checked out. Nobody knew at the time that the stones had turned her kidneys into a biological warzone. Or that she was already losing the war.
Friday, January 25th, I stopped by to visit her. She was on dialysis, antibiotics, and hooked up to more monitors than the security desk at a bank. She had already lost the ability to talk.
Saturday, January 26th, her vitals dropped. Plummeted.
Sunday, January 27th, her vitals couldn't drop any further.
Sunday night, January 27th, she was taken off life support. She hung around for a few more minutes, just to show off. And at 7:26 pm, Annie Grasha, MY Aunt Annie...passed away.
Seven. Twenty. Six.
...
FUCK 7:26.
...
That fast. She was gone. Teaching me split-leg backflips this summer? No. Coming to see me perform at Second City in July? Nope. Gonna talk about me doing stand up for the first time, or how much you loved my latest post, or the awesome new idea I had that I casually told you I'd have for you the next day while you were dying and I was was drowning in denial?
No. She's Not.
...
I was crushed. Devastated. A certain part of me was trapped in a void that it could not escape. Music, my usual escape plan when life was getting me down, was disturbingly useless. For some reason, I could not feel music anymore. No matter how bad things in my life had gotten, no matter how trapped or lost I felt, that had NEVER happened before. My aunt was gone. My escape plan for dealing with that fact was gone. It was unthinkably terrifying.
But I wouldn't show it.
Not now, now wasn't my time. My little cousins needed me. After all, it was my aunt, but it was their MOTHER. I had to be there for them doing something.
So for the entire week, I bolted for their house at every opportunity. It turned out to be the best thing for me as well. Because together, at their house, we were a family. Despite what had just happened, we had fun that week, more fun than I had had in a long time. Tuesday night, I got to drive my littlest two cousins in my car while we sang "We Are Young" as loud as we could. It was the only time I would feel music for two weeks. If that song ever comes on and my car and someone doesn't sing along with me, they will be punched. Other nights, we played card games with the visitors from Colorado, or had a LoL party with the older cousins. That weekend, we threw the sickest party I've been to since college. It was legendary.
But still, there was a part of me trapped in that void, gasping for air, clawing for freedom...
But i still wouldn't talk about it.
Days went by, and things got better. Being with family all the time was refreshing, and everyone getting back to their regular lives helped as well. Writing suddenly came back to me at the Super Bowl. After I read someone on Facebook commenting about the commercials, I decided to add my two cents and comment as well. I ended up commenting on every single commercial that night, with little quips and jokes here and there that felt incredible every time I came up with them. It was annoying as hell for all my Facebook friends, but the greatest therapy for me. Something was escaping from the void, slowly, finally...
But the blog did not come back so easily. I tried thinking about blog ideas, but it wasn't anything funny that came to mind. It was the hospital. The last words she said to me that I can't remember. The sounds and pictures of that night that are forever burned into my brain in the purest of HD sound and audio that kept me awake the first few nights after it all went down. At best, my thoughts were blank, like the stares on the faces of my brother that night, as we looked at each other and said without words "What the fuck do we do now? What the fuck do we say?" We had never been here before, we had never been prepared for this. There are no reset buttons, no engineering equations, no practices for this one. NOTHING.
...
The thoughts were inextricably linked to the blog. Writing for it was too painful.
So I stopped.
...
A few days later, in the car on the way to my Flag Football playoffs, I blasted "A Dustland Fairytale" as high as my radio would play it. It was the first time I had felt music by myself in weeks. I can't describe how special it was. The next day, thinking serious progress had been made, I tried again. "Status by Shakespeare, it's gonna happen!" I said to myself.
Funny.
Cue the replays...
Another week, Valentine's Day. There's tons of great things to write about! I could actually choose between ideas, that never happens!
Yeah, it didn't. Maybe next year.
...
And then, I just stopped caring. It wasn't worth the trouble anymore.
...
But something special happened last weekend, something I've never experienced in my life. After being more disappointed with myself than I've ever been in my life with another panzy attack (that's where I say "I'm gonna do something! and then completely chicken out), I did my standard terrible driving and took the wrong exit back on the highway. Taking a u-turn at the next exit, I stopped my car, grabbed my cell phone, and took a picture of the random highway sign and barn that laid at the end of the "T" I was about to U-turn at. I don't really know why I did this, I just felt like something major was happening in my life, and I needed to record it. So I took a few pictures, thought for second, said "now's the time," and got back in the car. I immediately put Airborne Toxic Event's self titled album in the CD player, grabbed the notepad from work that was left in my car, and started writing this blog entry about everything that had happened over the past few months. And I wrote with a passion and flow that I've never had before in my ten plus years of writing. The second time "Sometime Around Midnight" came up, I started losing it. I could only somewhat relate to the exact story of the song, but I've never written with a level of emotion anywhere near what I was writing with this story.
So I pushed it.
I played "Holding on to You" by 21 Pilots, the same song I posted the night before she passed away, the same song that will forever be linked to the snowy nights of late January 2013 when everything changed. I wrote on, beginning to hit the somber parts of this entry with feelings I can't ever recall having in my life. The misty eyes I carried with me from the previous song couldn't hold their wells any longer. I started crying as I wrote. A week later, I still can't remember the last time I legitimately cried. It has to be at least 10 years. But I kept writing. I kept pushing.
And it happened.
I put in "Day and Age" by The Killers in the CD player and skipped to Track #5, "A Dustland Fairytale," the first song I'd felt after weeks of numbness, the song I had an unnatural connection to that I still can't explain. And I wrote about the hardest parts of the this entry, in all their gut wrenching sadness and horrific memories. And I absolutely lost it. I cried like I don't think I've ever cried in my life. Because at that moment, I finally came to terms with what I had truly lost. But at the same time, I gained an ability, an appreciation, and an invigoration I've never found in my life. I finally faced what was pulling me down for the past months, maybe even longer. I'm gonna miss my aunt like hell, like nothing I've ever lost before, but I can't let it ruin my life. She wouldn't want that. Nobody would.
So I won't let it stop me. Period.
And since I've had that drive home, my life has changed dramatically. I've found a passion and fire inside of me that I haven't seen since maybe my senior year in college, maybe ever. I've found the swagger I used to have when I was on top of the world, and absolutely I'm running with it. I don't know how long this rush is going to last, but I don't care. I'm riding this wave, and whether it glides gently to shore into cheers of glory or slides violently into the sharp pointy rocks at the break, I don't give a damn. I'm all in. I have a life to live, a potential to live up to, a lot of people I owe a whole hell of a lot to, and a few missed years of life to make up for. No way in hell this is stopping me now.
...
This picture was taken at 7:56 pm, exactly 30 minutes after my aunt passed away.
Bury me with this picture.
Because this is my family at our absolute finest. No matter what shit life throws at us, we take it in stride, and we live on, because that's what we would want for each other. That's what Aunt Annie would want for us. And that's what she'd want for me. So I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna learn split-leg backflips. I'm going to perform on Second City's stage. I'm going to move fucking mountains for the rest of my life. And I'm sure as hell going to write this blog. Because I may have lost my Number One Fan, but her children make up numbers 2-5 on my top fans list, and they've been waiting for a new post for FAR too long.
So here's to writing this blog again. I'm back. Enjoy.
