silver lining
Well I guess this cold is not as over as I thought it was. What a pain in the ass! It really felt like it was just this brief thing between Thursday and Saturday and I took care of it by sleeping half the day away on Saturday -- and I felt basically fine on Sunday and Monday! But yesterday and today, I keep sneezing, and the sneezes keep clogging up my nose, and I am blowing my nose into tissues far more often than I would prefer to be (which, preferably, would be never).
And now, today my head feels a bit heavier than usual, not quite there but sort of skirting sinus-headache territory. I was much more tired than usual again last night, was asleep at about 9:50 and could have slept much later this morning than when my alarm woke me at 5:20 -- and sleeping soundly for nearly seven and a half hours is far more than I usually get on weeknights, when I tend to average closer to, say, six and a half.
I mean, I guess I could count my blessings. My throat isn't sore, and it really never got especially sore; it was a slight tickle late last week and it passed without getting any worse than that over two days. A sore throat is always my least favorite part of a cold. Also, if I must get a late-summer cold, I much rather it happen now than, for instance, when Danielle and I are headed off to Las Vegas at the end of the month.
Anyway Shobhit was in the middle of making a Spanish rice based dish when I got home, and I did just a little bit of the chopping left to be done. He was watching TV news programs that I left him to, until he fell asleep after a couple of bloody marys he made for himself. The only TV I watched was one episode of Cheers before deciding I wanted to go to bed.
Gabriel called me yesterday afternoon about some plans for this weekend, and I found out his beloved maternal grandpa died. I know how much his grandparents meant to him, and even though he has acknowledged for years that he was going to have to face this day sooner than later, I knew it would be hard. Still it feels like it was kind of dopey for me to say to him, "I wish there was something I could say, but I know there's nothing I can say." He actually said, "I appreciate that." Which, I suppose, I get.
It was 1996 when I lost my first grandparent, also my maternal one. I was 23 then, and it was the first family death I had to face as an adult, so grieving the loss of a loved one was new to me. I lived with Gabriel at the time, and it was pretty clear then that he felt horrible for me, and also helpless to make me feel any better. Even in my grief -- and I remember that specific night when I went to bed and cried, and he was the one who expressed condolences before shutting my bedroom door -- I understood that. No one really knows what they can do or say in the face of someone else's grief, and I have long understood that everyone grieves in their own way and cannot be judged for it.
The only thing I can say now is this: Gabriel's Papa Jack, who I met a couple of times and struck me as a wonderful man, lived into his nineties. I thought yesterday about how Gabriel himself lived to be 42 years old before he lost even his first beloved grandparent. How often does that happen? And that, if nothing else, is certainly a gift. Probably few people get to enjoy their grandparents for so much of their own lives.
[posted 12:23 pm]