December 18th

Honestly, I was dumbstruck.  The cell phone almost seemed to burn my hand.  I could not believe that Charlie was relaying the message to me; Gran was gone.  How was I not the first to know?  As many times a day as I called, how was I sitting in the traffic line waiting to pick up the children and just learning that she had passed that morning?  The knowledge stung me like a slap to the face.  

I looked through the window shield of my car and saw the cross atop the school building.  I felt betrayed.  I felt abandoned.  I didn't feel relief that her suffering had ended.  Fuck God for making her suffer in the first place.

The whistle blew and I exited my car, tears coursing down my face.  Several teachers stopped me, embraced me; Teddy's teacher even suggested that Gran was in a hurry to meet Jesus before Christmas.  Jesus is right.  Jesus indeed.  Jesus Christ are these people serious?

She served her god.  She attended mass regularly.  She observed the stations of the cross.  She was a regular server for Adoration.  In the end, she wore morphine patches and had to have pain killers placed in suppository form.  God wanted that?  In his infinite wisdom, God created cancer and afflicted my grandmother with it?

I have questioned a lot in my life.  Interestingly, I have never questioned, Why me?  Why am I afflicted with bi polar depression?  I am unconcerned.  Some people are diabetic, others are hemophiliacs... I get it.  Some people are born to suffer.  A cross to bear, my mother would say.  Well enough is enough.  Pick on the rapists, the pedophiles, the murderers.  Sweet little grandmothers should be off limits.  

I used to be firebrand.  My tongue was silver and quick and I rarely paused to check with my head before using it.  I like to think I have mellowed and matured... that my bodily parts are more connected to my mental faculties.  Well consider me undone.  Unhinged.  For those of you who are devout, consider me uncouth.  Save a plane that crash lands into the Hudson but condemn thousands of innocents in Darfur?  Where is the logic?  Where is the justice?  The Infinite Wisdom?  When a "miracle" occurs, a baby snatched from fire, a warrior brought home, God is credited... where is God for the little girl smothered by her mother in Florida?  Where is God for Matthew Sheperd?  Where was God for Gran, and spare me the explanation that she was put out of her suffering because who would have caused her suffering in the first place?

I am spewing bitterness and hatred... most likely because it is a bile I cannot keep down any longer.  I am sickened.  My heart is halved.