I found out last night at 10:45 that my Grandad passed away.
It's the first death of a close loved one I've ever had to come to terms with.
My body celebrated the occasion by kindly sending my stomach haywire and hospitalising me via ambulance within an hour of the news.
It was not fun.
Apparently the mind and the stomach are closely linked, and the stomach produces excess acid when I am anxious.
Last night it produced so much that it began eating itself.
I spent half an hour curled up on the stairs in miserable agony before the medics arrived.
Man, that really hurt.
Hearing the news about Grandad was like a slow-motion car wreck where you don't actually feel the initial impact but just see everything disintegrate around you in horrific style.
It was like being punched in the stomach by an invisible fist, and not feeling it, but seeing your guts exploding everywhere.
The medics put me on gas and air (oxygen and nitrogen) for about 3 hours, because the cause of the pain was acid and the cause of the acid was anxiety, so they need to chill me out.
I'll be honest, it was fun spending 3 hours high as a kite. It certainly kept the acid at bay.
I experienced that dopey stoner place where you 'understand, man', and not only that, but you understand that you understand, man.
I realise why so many stoners get philosophical under the influence - life makes a sweet kind of stupid sense when you combine low-level euphoria with a fractionally operational brain.
Happy plus stupid equals a gormless satisfaction, which sometimes is preferable to enlightened, painful understanding.
Death is such an impossible thing to fully process.
Where is my Grandad now? Is he anywhere at all, or has he ceased to exist?
You may answer 'yes' or 'no' as you read, but whatever your persuasion, you dont really know.
The only true answer is 'who knows'.
There is no real intellectual proof that he exists in heaven, or is once again in the simple oblivion that existed before birth.
The not-knowing is infuriating, enraging, so typical of the fundamentally frustrating and vexing nature of life.
It's almost as if the point of life is to exist with the knowledge we desire permanently just out of reach.
I wish I had some kind of belief in which I could take solace about my Grandad and where he is now, because then I could begin to process it all.
Its hard to get closure on something when all the answers are 'I dont know'.
He was a great man, and I will miss him alot.
Thinking about these things is infuriating enough to hospitalise anyone.
It's the first death of a close loved one I've ever had to come to terms with.
My body celebrated the occasion by kindly sending my stomach haywire and hospitalising me via ambulance within an hour of the news.
It was not fun.
Apparently the mind and the stomach are closely linked, and the stomach produces excess acid when I am anxious.
Last night it produced so much that it began eating itself.
I spent half an hour curled up on the stairs in miserable agony before the medics arrived.
Man, that really hurt.
Hearing the news about Grandad was like a slow-motion car wreck where you don't actually feel the initial impact but just see everything disintegrate around you in horrific style.
It was like being punched in the stomach by an invisible fist, and not feeling it, but seeing your guts exploding everywhere.
The medics put me on gas and air (oxygen and nitrogen) for about 3 hours, because the cause of the pain was acid and the cause of the acid was anxiety, so they need to chill me out.
I'll be honest, it was fun spending 3 hours high as a kite. It certainly kept the acid at bay.
I experienced that dopey stoner place where you 'understand, man', and not only that, but you understand that you understand, man.
I realise why so many stoners get philosophical under the influence - life makes a sweet kind of stupid sense when you combine low-level euphoria with a fractionally operational brain.
Happy plus stupid equals a gormless satisfaction, which sometimes is preferable to enlightened, painful understanding.
Death is such an impossible thing to fully process.
Where is my Grandad now? Is he anywhere at all, or has he ceased to exist?
You may answer 'yes' or 'no' as you read, but whatever your persuasion, you dont really know.
The only true answer is 'who knows'.
There is no real intellectual proof that he exists in heaven, or is once again in the simple oblivion that existed before birth.
The not-knowing is infuriating, enraging, so typical of the fundamentally frustrating and vexing nature of life.
It's almost as if the point of life is to exist with the knowledge we desire permanently just out of reach.
I wish I had some kind of belief in which I could take solace about my Grandad and where he is now, because then I could begin to process it all.
Its hard to get closure on something when all the answers are 'I dont know'.
He was a great man, and I will miss him alot.
Thinking about these things is infuriating enough to hospitalise anyone.
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