This is the second time in as many weeks that I've been in this...this space wherein I can't seem to breathe. Calling it a panic attack seems to be too simplistic when you look at it from all angles possible because you see...there are reasons why my heart quickens, my breath shortens, the palms of my hands begin to sweat. There are reasons and it's too simplistic to simply say I'm having a panic attack because, if you're honest with me, they won't stop just because you've named them. Just because you've decided that there has to be a REASON for this to continue on.

I'm tired of being alone even as I was tired of the life I had while I was with him. It seemed neither of us had dreams any longer. We just were. We simply existed. And that couldn't go on forever.

I guess if I'm honest with myself I would state I knew what I would do before I did it because I'm meticulous to a fault. There is nothing wrong with living this simple life and, there was nothing wrong with making it even simpler by extracting the excess. This is why...when the phone rang twice in the span of an hour I decided to go upstairs and get it. Answer it. See what was the urgency since it seemed so many days had passed without anyone remembering I existed mindfully.

So I answered.

And I found out that my Grandmother had passed over to the next life she spoke of so often. My Grandmother I spoke to every Sunday around four o'clock right before she ate her simple dinner because if I'm considered simple...she was minimalistic indeed. My Grandmother who'd buried two husbands and four children. My Grandmother who was healthier than I am. My Grandmother who...smiled the softness into her skin. Whose gray hair fell around her shoulders even at age 91.

I guess my story is like a lot of others in that my Grandmother raised me after my mother decided life would be better for me living with her mother instead of my mother. I remember the trip on the train, dressed nicely with our hair freshly pressed. My four bags to my mother's one. I remember arriving to my Grandmother's love, hug and disapproval. Not towards me...but to my mother who was always too something or the other in her mother's eyes and no matter how much she loved me I could never get her to understand the good that was in my mother and she made me pay for her own disapproval with the struggles to remain somewhat loyal to all my mother tried to be.

When my Grandmother buried my mother she never cried. I kept waiting for it but it never came. When I asked her why she simply stated that my mother lived her life doing whatever she wanted to do so it should be obvious she was happy and a happy life doesn't require tears.

But I cried then.

Just as I cry now because my Grandmother is gone and I have no one to call come Sunday. Two days ahead of me.

My Aunt sounded beat down. Lost...like...she couldn't believe it even as she knew it to be true. Four hours passed before I was called because the ambulance and the police came and then they had to go to the hospital although my Aunt didn't understand why they had to go to the hospital since she was already dead. According to my Aunt...it's just another way the crooked Governor has made decent folks have to eek out a living. By adding unnecessary layers to a process full of contradictions. See...this way we had to pay the ambulance instead of just calling the funeral home from the git.go.

And I recognized that she just needed to talk because this was the type of incessant chatter she always did with my Grandmother who never really listened and knew enough to not stop my Aunt knowing that my Uncle had stopped listening to her years ago and she just needed to talk.

To someone.

To anyone.

Now to me.

Because my Grandmother was gone and as my Aunt talked I really hoped with all of me that the Heaven my Grandmother always painted with the most vivid of colors indeed existed and that there was a celebration of epic proportions when my Grandmother arrived to take her place among those who lived a true life.

True.

Different from good or just.

You can live a good life and it not be true.

You can live a just life and it not be true.

According to my Grandmother...a true life was what one should strive for. Be true to God, your family, your friends, random people. Be true.

And good and just will follow.

My Aunt realized she had a host of other relatives to call and told me to stay strong. That I should probably go ahead and get my ticket to come home so we could put her away right.

And I hung up the phone.

What to do now? Seems this should change everything even as I look around and find nothing has changed. My small life mimics my Grandmothers and she had decades on me.

When I cried it wasn't for my Grandmother because she had a happy life doing what she wanted to do.

When I cried it wasn't for the want of someone there to hold me. To comfort me.

When I cried it was because now...I had nothing to look forward to on Sundays.

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