On Summer Tears.

You turn off the movie, because the story of Margaret Thatcher's dementia is to close to home right now. You have never turned off a Meryl Streep movie, but “The Iron Lady” will have to wait. But you will return the RedBox rentals the next day and have no plans to choose this particular film again.

You glance toward the clock as you climb into bed. It is around 11:00. You have no intention of sleeping tonight. You start to rethink your decision to shut down your computer, knowing that hours of mindless television episodes are available. As you stare at the clock and wonder what you could find on Nick @ Nite, you try not to see the photos on the bedside table. You put them there last week and now you wish they were hidden away.

It's a good thing your roommates are all gone this week, because the next few hours are not an experience you would want to share with them. They would try to comfort you with clichés that would only make you angry, and they don't deserve your anger. And you don't trust them with your grief or pain, so you are thankful that you are alone in your cold apartment to face this night.

You pick up the pictures. The first is of you, sitting with your grandpa, looking at a giant scrapbook of his life. The picture was taken over fifteen years ago, around the time he retired from forty years of ministry with Christian Service Brigade. Your aunts made the book for him, filling it with boarding passes, photos, stories, and luggage tags from his many trips across the country. You don't remember looking at it with him.

The other picture was taken after you climbed onto his lap to give him a hug goodnight. He held you close with both arms, the good one and the one that was shot decades ago in Korea. Your aunts laugh now as they remember watching the two of you. You were so special to each other back then, and you hardly remember it.

He had the first stroke shortly after he retired. Your dad will later remark at how gracious God was in His timing, that “while he needed the words to come easily, they did, traveling across the country. Now, in his retirement, he was slowed down to sit in a coffee shop in Webster and become part of the lives of some guys who wouldn’t have talked to the conference speaker but loved this

slow-speaking, listening man who knew Jesus.” You hear these words and think, “Sure, Dad, that was great for them, but I don't remember my Grandpa for who he really was and now I have to deal with grieving this loss without really understanding why it should hurt so much because I didn't really lose that much but it hurts more than anything I've ever experienced.” But you know that he's right.

And now as you look at these pictures of moments you don't remember, the tears start to fall. You know right away that you are in for a long night of searching for memories that simply do not exist. You mourn their nonexistence. You mourn your lost childhood. You mourn. You sob loudly, hoping that your landlady doesn't hear from upstairs and wonder what is going on. You hold your stuffed animals tightly to your chest, and wish that there was someone to hold you in the same way. You wish that you could be comforted. You cry for over an hour. And then you open your Bible. You are reminded that God is in control and that He is faithful. You are reminded that your grandfather belongs to Him, and that you had no right to be selfish when you sat in that church with a bitter heart.

You remember that day, just over a year ago, when your dad got a call from his sister that they were taking their dad to the hospital. You were at the church working on a project for the youth basement and he was there because he works there and he found you and told you he was leaving for Illinois and you didn't know what to do because the last time you saw your grandpa you didn't even say good-bye. And now you remember kicking yourself after realizing that your grandparents had left and you hadn't said good-bye and you hoped that it hadn't been your last chance.

But it was and you will hold on to that memory as a failure. You had a dream a few months ago. Your grandfather was there, in a wheelchair, hooked up to all kinds of medical equipment. You're not sure how your brain created this image, because you never visited him in the hospital. But there he was and you said good-bye to him and woke up and had to remember that he is gone.

This is why you don't want to sleep tonight. If you go to sleep on June 19, you will wake up on June 20 and realize that it has been one year since you got the text from your mom that said “please pray for grandma and grandpa. things are very serious with him right now. we 're still an hour away from the hosp. gma doesn't know.” And you would have to remember the call from your dad telling you that your grandpa would not survive the day. You would remember crying with your brother for the first time in your lives. You would remember burning cookies when you got the call that he was gone. You don't want to face those memories, and you seem to believe that staying awake will keep the morning from coming.

But it doesn't. Eventually, you have cried all the tears you can cry. You realize that it is past 3:00. You finally succumb to your exhaustion. When you wake up, too soon, you brew coffee in his honor. You think about the promise you made to him to find a husband before you graduate from college and wonder what your senior year will bring. You meet with your mission trip team and hold it together because they, too, don't deserve your anger or grief. You remember all of the things you wanted to avoid.

You dread the day when you will have to write about this night, not because you don't want anyone to know about it but because you will have to remember it again and you will have to remember all of the things you hate to remember. But when you sit down to write and start to remember, you will also remember that this catharsis is good for you. You will remember why you enjoy writing like this. And as you finish, Ben Folds will be singing “The Luckiest” and you will think about your dad's tweets as he drove to Illinois that day. ”What if ‘honor your parents’ means for me ‘help them finish the story of their lives as well as they can.’?” “and his story is ‘i kept my word to take care of her’ and hers is ‘i kept my word to make people feel at home’” You couldn't have planned it better.