Gone, but not Lost
Second Place
WRTG A111: Writing Across Contexts
Dr. Iver Arnegard
Amber Godin is a first year student at Mat-Su college and is currently studying to earn a BS in nursing. Her goal is to use her nursing degree to help others just as Jesus did. Having been born and raised in Alaska she can often be found lost in its vast beautiful landscape. In her freetime she enjoys writing, gardening, and tending her many pet chickens as well as reading her Bible.
A Note to the Reader
For this assignment students were to select from a list of topics that Dr. Iver Arnegard wrote out on a whiteboard, to write a personal essay on. One topic stood out to the author: loss. In the writing process, Amber wrote a story of loss, pain and bitterness. However, as she continued to write it, it morphed into something more: acceptance and happiness. As she wrote her essay, she found comfort in words that her grandfather had spoken to her and peace. As she revised it, she realized that she wanted to write something that others who have recently experienced loss could find comfort and solace in as well. This is that work.
Gone, but not Lost
A smile plays across his lips. I smile back at him as tears trickle down my cheek. I kick at a nearby pile of discarded blue gloves as people bustle around cleaning scattered supplies off the floor. My chest clenches in anger at the wanton abandon, at the loss.
My little brother hangs limp over the open hood of his truck, aimlessly tapping a wrench against the engine, as if maybe that will fix it.
Grandma stands in the corner of the hangar staring into oblivion. My dad isn’t here yet and my mom is hugging family friends. An older lady with peppered gray hair reaches her arms out and starts toward me. Her feet clack against the concrete floor, resounding throughout the hangar, disturbing the sacred silence. I side step her hug. Hugs fix nothing, they are simply empty condolences.
She frowns and retreats to my mom’s side. I wish these people weren’t here. I wish I could have a moment to talk things over with him, with grandpa.
No one gives me such luxury, so instead my thoughts and emotions scream inside my head.. no.. in my heart. If they were simply in my head, my chest wouldn’t writhe in pain like it does now.
I step gingerly toward grandpa and look down at his face. He is still smiling. I’m not quite sure what I expected to see.
Grandpa is simply chilling on the concrete floor. I bet he’s cold.
“Cold.” My mind echoes a simple word that brings me to a distant time, and a happier place.
“Why’re hans so cold?” Grandpa asks in his North Eastern accent. He envelops my hand in his, trying to warm it.
I smile as my brain sifts through memories, throwing new ones forward.
“Grandpa!” I run to catch up with him and grasp his hand. “Ahhhuh. Is your hans as col’ as your heart?! He jokingly exclaims. “Grandpa,” I giggle. “Maybe it’s just your cold heart that you feel.”
The cold sharp blade of reality snaps me back.
A laugh gurgles up my throat, splitting the drowning silence like an overripe tomato.
“Now whose hand is cold?” I manage between laughs.
My brother lifts his head and gives me a questioning glance as my mom looks at me in horror. But I don’t care, I haven’t laughed since December and I need it. I haven’t laughed since reality blurred into a horror film. No, a Hallmark movie. But one that doesn’t end happily.
A Hallmark movie where a granddaughter goes over to her grandma’s house once a week to clean. A Hallmark movie where they have weekly talks like Tuesdays at Morrie’s, only for the granddaughter to find out that her grandma is being consumed by cancer. That she can do nothing, say nothing, to convince her to get help. Until it’s too late and she ends up in the hospital on the edge of death. Just as the girl thinks that nothing can get worse, the man married to her grandma dies on his way to kiss her goodbye. Then the girl's grandma dies and she feels like nothing could make life any worse, and then it does. She gets a phone call to drive to her grandpa’s hangar right now, because he might not be okay. And as the girl races there, reality dawns on her. Her grandpa is not okay... if he was okay an ambulance would be speeding past her. So as the girl races towards truth she begs God to send one flying past her, yet he never does.
I know this girl. Today is January 12th, and reality has made a cutthroat appearance. Today, grandpa is dead, 39 days ago grandma became dead, and 40 days ago the man who loved her died.
Planes and helicopters rest around the hangar, awaiting their owners' beloved return. They anticipate the loving gentle hands of the man who mended, fixed and coddled them. Hands that now lie cold on the concrete floor where they came to rest. The hangar once so full of warmth and light feels cold and empty now.
The girl that I know feels like this hangar. Her emotions sit on the edge of a cliff waiting to come crashing down, yet for some reason they don't. I feel numb.
After so many losses, why would God create more?
My eyes wander the cold hangar taking in memories as they present themselves until finally my eyes rest upon a crowbar. A useful item, yet dangerous if used wrong. I carefully approach it so as to not scare its meaning away. I slowly reach forward and touch the cool metal surface.
Old Happy Meal toys, outdated kitchen appliances and miscellaneous tools lay scattered across the ground. Each one removed from its yard sale tent, tossed from its place on old folding tables.
“That’s it, garage sale over.” Grandma resigned angrily while standing in front of the now splayed open trailer. I quietly peeked from behind her to see the damage.
“Wellllll, that settles the po’er tools.” Grandpa put his arm around my shoulder.
“Let’s just move it all to the street corner since they already took whatever they wanted. Might as well let the selfish scoundrels finish it off.” Grandma started to pick up miscellaneous items and toss them toward the road.
I carefully reached down and picked up a crowbar by the trailer door and poked it at holes of corresponding size. Grandma whirled around to see the trouble I was causing
“What are you…” she trailed off. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She spat.
“They used the crowbar I was going to sell to break into my own trailer. Huh!” She snorted in disdain. Grandpa just shook his head and put his arm around her and squeezed her arm.
“Maybes theys really needed tools, or clothes.” He stated simply.
“But. They. Stole. It.” Grandma spelled out challenging him.
“How coulds they have stole it when it wars’t ours? God gave it to us and now he sent its where it s’ppose go next. We jus need be thankful we hads them when we needed ems.” Grandpa kissed me on the forehead and winked like we shared a secret.
Maybe it was because we did.
I stepped back from the crowbar and glanced at grandpa. He was still smiling as he always did when he’d made a point or taught a lesson.
“Alright. I get it Grandpa.” I muttered with a smile.
How can I be angry or upset at losing something that isn’t mine? But how can I be happy when I feel shorted, wronged, or stolen from? Because right now, I definitely feel all of those things. Yet, somehow Grandpa managed such happiness. He knew all too well the pain of searing loss in his life. His first wife died of lung cancer that metastasized to her brain, youngest son died as he begged for life in a hospital bed, best friend, he watched fade into pain, and then death. He witnessed all of these things, but he still had a genuine smile.
I watched the pain of missing them, hurt him.
One particular day I stood in front of a painting of a flight map with a bear overlaid. A painting from his deceased friend. “Grandpa, why are you still so happy?” I had asked him. “We all gotta die someday.” He had simply put it. “We can be sad and bit’r ‘bout it. Or we can be thankful for the gif’ of time we was given. We’s gonna see them agin one day, we jus has to be patient.”
He never considered any of them losses. Instead, he was thankful for the time he got to spend with them, and clung to the fact that one day he would see them again.
Over and over again when trouble had struck or it felt like the family had been wronged or shorted in some way or another he would say words such as those. He meant and believed those words with his whole heart. He did not need to know why, nor was he angry that the gifts of life were gone. He was simply thankful for what he had, the things he was able to accomplish, and the time he had. He considered loved ones and family to be a gift especially, and was always thankful for the borrowing of time to spend with them.
As I think back on these things he smiles at me from the floor, thoughts twirl and dance through my mind. How can you lose someone, when they were never really yours? If time is a gift, then life is a gift, and everything is a gift. The gentle nuzzle of a dog's nose in the palm of your hand, the feeling of warm sand between your toes, and laughs shared among friends. Each a gift to be cherished while it is had, and when it is gone, to be remembered and thankful for the time had. Family perishes, friends come and go, items break, get stolen, and are “lost.” But each is just a loan, a gift of time.
As these thoughts frolic through my mind, his contagion of a smile spreads to my face. The lingering EMTs look at me like I’ve truly lost it. In my opinion, they just haven’t found it yet, and I hope that one day they will.
I slowly lower myself and kneel beside grandpa. My knees crunch on the concrete. I gently kiss grandpa on the forehead. “Thank you.” I whisper as I look up, knowing grandpa’s demeanor, he’s up there dancing around giddy that he beat the rest of us there.