In Memorial

Gunsite Mountain Alaska
Muriel Faye Marinelli 1943-1991
Louie B Marinelli 1941-1991

Grief, I think is the strangest of emotions. It ebbs and flows like a river, behaving almost of its own accord. Happiness? Fear? Sadness? Anger? These emtions I have some sense of control over. But grief? She does as she will.

Today is the 15th anniversary of the month my Granparents died. Nana on 25 October and Papa the night before Thanksgiving. Barely a month apart.On some days it seems like a long long time ago. The memories are faint and there is only the meloncholy emptiness that exists when you miss someone. But on other days, the memories are sharp and raw like a sunburn. I can relive every single detail of the days and those that followed if I allow myself.

My Nana died first, from complications from Emphysema. We expected it. We knew the end was near and we made our goodbyes.We were as ready as you can be to lose someone you love. Sometimes I get scared when I think that I have forgotten the sound of her voice, all scratchy from years of smoking or the way she laughed, or how she walked with a little waddle. Sometimes I am in a store and I will hear someone a few aisles over cough a raspy smokers cough and I remember being lost from her in a grocery store when I was a kid, and only having to listen for her distinctive cough.I miss her, but usually only when I reach a milestone, or badly need her advice.

My Papa is a different story. He died unexpectedly from a masive heart attack in the Costco parking lot. Honestly, at the time it seemed impossible that we should have to endure it so soon after losing Nana. I thought he was well, but looking back, he'd probably been ill for some time, remaining strong to care for Nana, and us as we grieved her. The pain from him dying is still sick in my stomach even after all this time.

I have a reoccuring dream about him. I rears its ugly head at this time of year and sometimes for no apparent reason at all. We are in Italy (my Papa was 100% Italian) in the countryside. (I am not sure why we are there, we were never there together, I am not even aware if he ever went to Italy himself at all.) There is a parochial school on the side of a mountain and it is full of children. It is raining hard and there is a sudden mudslide and my Papa and I are bringing armload after armoload of children out of the threatened school when it is overtaken by the mud.The children are all safe, but I am lost from my Grandfather and I am forever looking for him in the swirling mud and debris. I always wake up sweaty and in tears.

I have read book after book about dreams and interpeting them, but nothing even begins to explain it. The only theme that matches it is "rescue". My Papa is not my biological Grandfather, but my mother's stepdad, who married my Grandma after she divorced my Mother's father.Some books suggest I feel like he "rescued" my family. And the fact that he is lost from me in the mud that I am still grieving his death.
It still confuses me though.

Papa

The sound of your voice still rings in the closets of my ears
and the smell of your hugs still lingers in the deepest part of my nose.
Regret binds me to your loss and chases me in my dreams.
I wonder, would who I have become make you proud?
would you see your fingerprints on my life and be glad?