excerpt from email to susie

until the funeral, i couldn't cry about my grandma. i think it just hadn't set in. i guess during the funeral it set in when my aunty was giving her speech. my grandma really was the most amazing lady. after the speeches there was this photo slideshow with frank sinatra playing over top (her favourite). i did the kind of crying where you lose all control and you have to make sound. i realised how good she was to me. my mum put her arm around me. i didn't want her to put her arm around me because i didn't want to be consoled. i wanted to feel pain because that is what felt right. after the funeral in a toilet stall i continued to cry. i couldn't stop crying. but it was okay because everyone was crying. i played with nova and i felt better. i had a cup of tea and i felt better. at the reception i talked to my cousins about how we didn't like how much the priest talked about god and the afterlife. i thought about it a lot. i felt happy that my grandma was not afraid to die because of her faith, but i wish human beings didn't have to need that. i felt comforted by the open ended nature of existence. i remember staring blankly out the window of the church, accepting nothingness. afterwards we went to the cemetery to put her coffin in the grave. it took forever for her casket to get down to the bottom. it was starting to rain and i was looking at the trees and letting tears fall down my face. i was saying goodbye and it hurt. i put flowers into her grave and i felt nothing as i did it. it seemed like an empty gesture. i felt more when i was staring at the trees. after that we went to my granddads house and a lot of people were there. we had beers and i sat with my cousins and my sister. i played with nova. i played with my 4 yo cousin mia. she was playing a game where her doll was climbing a mountain and my body was the mountain. i felt strangely uninhibited. we drew in her colouring book. it felt okay. i fell asleep on the couch for a while. my parents got drunk and i had to drive them home.