Do we grieve as we should? Two stories that make me wonder...

Riding on a bus headed for Niagara Falls, having only dozed for maybe two hours from Junction City to Kansas City (MO), and having just enjoyed a delicious breakfast sandwich made by two men speaking that sonorous KCMO Black accent, I decided to listen to some music. But, the bus's Wi-Fi wasn't keeping up with Pandora, so I picked Tracy Lawrence and soon realized that I was in the mood for country ballads. What has followed so far was the rest of Tracy's ballads from his Greatest Hits, then "Straight Tequila Nights" by John Anderson, and now I'm on Blackhawk. When I got to Tracy's "Texas Tornado," I started to tear up... I began thinking of something that I had in the past, something that wasn't really right for me (which I had known for most of the duration) but that I still missed parts of. I remember that, when that relationship ended, or, more specifically, morphed (how often does a relationship truly "end?"), I was upset and hurt, and had some moisture in my eyes... ********************************** In the early 1980s, years before I was born, the maternal side of my family endured a catastrophic series of losses. In around two years, FOURTEEN of them died. Three of the four generations lost at least one member. My grandmother lost her husband to Parkinson's disease. My aunt and uncle lost two sons, one to drowning, one who had complications as an infant and died before his fourth month began. Around 20 years later, Grandma was driving her white Plymouth Breeze (she prefers red) to my cousin's basic training graduation. She doesn't remember how, but she must have fallen asleep. The crash broke a bone in almost every apendage. She survived, living to defy death again on her 80th birthday, four years later... but, she wasn't the same. She sat around all day, drugged up on varying degrees of pain killers, gaining so much weight that my mother began to insist that she pull herself up when someone proposed the taking of a picture... She, my mother, didn't want my youngest brother to remember his Grandma as an amorphous blob in an easy chair. In the Spring of 2009, my sister made up her mind to bring Grandma to live with her in Salina... To paraphrase, my sister said to my grandma, "You can go to free shows all the time, have your own house, and we'll even get you a cat!" Due to a combined effort from sister (40%), grandma (35%), and myself (25%), grandma has lost over 60 lbs. which on a woman of 5'1" is spectacular. We're hoping that she wins her war with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and hangs around for another 5-10 years. Her distinctive mannerisms have all returned, she does chores, and sure loves to chat. Once, I asked Grandma what in the world she was doing, what she was thinking about, all those years, 8 or 9, that she was just sitting in a chair... Of course, part of what she was doing was coping with pain, but she took me aback when she said, "I never really had a chance to grieve." "For Aunt Mary?" I asked, referring to her younger sister who died of a diabetes-related heart attack over 15 years ago. "Well, yes, but also for Daddy." (Grandma always forgets to which generation she's talking. She meant my grandfather.) She had struck me. "For GRANDPA?" I asked incredulously. "But that was in 1982!" "Well, I never really had a chance to mourn. Someone always needed me." "You held in all that pain for over 25 years?" Thirty years after the death of a grandfather he'll never know in this world, the grandson who bears his grandfather's first name as his middle, accented in a way that leads most people to pronounce it inappropriately upon first reading, a grandson who still signs everything with that big, loopy, capital "B.," rides on a bus to support his mother in the completion of her two-year certificate program in Spiritual Guidance. Perhaps, his reasons for holding in the sadness are steeped in latent bitterness, pride, and incredulousness, yet, still, he's been unable to completely move on. This sadness needs an outlet. I wonder... How often do we grieve as we should, mourning the losses in our life? How often do we let the sadness and hurt lie buried in our subconscious mind, hindering our emotional maturity? *************************** Dialogue from an episode of the TV show "Scrubs"... The surgeon's brother's wife left him, and the surgeon risks making his fiancè angry by taking his brother out for drinks. The brother asks what he's supposed to do, and Dr. Turk takes over: "Barkeep, I'm gonna need these two glasses, and that bottle of whisky. 'Scuse me, yes, my brother definitely needs to borrow your hat. And for the love of all that is holy! Will somebody please put on some country!"