Break In My Heart

46. Thunderstorms

The next week flew by in a numb blur. After my Papa had broken the news to me, I stayed in my room for three straight days. It turned out that she'd suffered a stroke the day before the All-State games started, right before my Papa had called me when I was with Tyler. At the time, my fathers covered it up as a slight tumble down the stairs due to them not knowing the severity of the stroke nor did they want to "throw me off my game during such an important time", as my Papa put it.

Bullshit.

By the time they made it down to South Carolina, Nonna was in very bad shape. She'd died when Papa was on the phone with me the last time. That's why I heard Padre screaming in the background. The very thought made my heart twist and ache. While I was getting mad at Papa over the phone, Nonna had died. I'd heard the silence and pain of death and I hadn't even known. While I was fooling around with Tyler, my fathers were in imaginable pain. That made the grief dig into me even harder.

Grief had twisted my stomach into tight, nauseating knots that refused to let me eat any food, not that I wanted to anyway. How could I eat when it wasn't Nonna's cooking? How could I enjoy it when I knew Nonna would never cook my favorite dish ever again? No more "Heart Attacks", which was our favorite dessert for her to make us, no more fussing when I tried to sneak a bite of the food before everything was ready.

No more Nonna.

I even stayed in my room when my Papa, uncle, and aunt had the impossible job of breaking the news to my siblings. I heard their screams and their cries rip through the house and pierce my ears. The very sound made my body instinctively want to run down there and comfort them like the protective older brother I was supposed to be. But the human side of me kept me anchored to my bed as tears welled up from the deepest part of me and spilled over my cheeks.

My arms ached for my Padre who'd still been in South Carolina at the time arranging the funeral.

Grief quickly turned into depression and during that dark time where life seemed to stand still and become meaningless, I understood why Tyler shut down the way he did sometimes. Though I was experiencing it for drastically different reasons, I was still experiencing it.

On the second day, my shock was replaced by anger. I ripped all the sheets off of my bed and threw whatever I could get my hands on, not caring if it shattered or broke. I was angry and anything within my reach would feel my wrath. I was angry at my dads for keeping it from me, I was mad at myself for not listening to my gut when it told me that something was wrong, I was even mad at the assholes that beat my fathers up all those years ago and ultimately pushed them away from their hometown for good. I even blamed God for seemingly punishing me for missing church due to the craziness that had been going on with Tyler and me.

Surely He couldn't be so petty as to take away Nonna for missing a few Sundays. Other people have done way worse and they're billionaires now, so why target her? Or was it because I was gay and in a happy relationship? Were the homophobic church-goers right? Did God truly hate me because of the boy I loved? Was I the reason Nonna was taken? Was I the reason for my family's pain?

I wanted to pin the blame on a thing, something, anything, but I couldn't. As if it were a blade in my heart, the knowledge that this loss couldn't be pinned on me or my fathers or that stupid homophobic town or even on God, caused the reality of the situation to keep twisting itself as it got buried deeper and deeper inside of me.

On the third day after I received the news, I got a text from Tyler telling me he was coming over. I'd been ignoring his texts all the days prior, unable to put on an "okay" front nor could I will myself to type out Nonna's dead. I wasn't ready to refer to her in the past tense. I wasn't ready to say out loud that she was gone. If I did, if I physicalized or verbalized it in any way, then that would mean it was true. So if I just shoved the ticking time bomb of emotions I was feeling deep inside of me and never say the words "Nonna" and "dead" in the same sentence, then it wouldn't be true, right?