I didn’t cry much as a kid. One memory that stands out though, was New Year’s Eve, 1989. I was traveling with my family, lodging at a Day’s Inn somewhere between Charlotte and D.C. Approaching midnight, my young senses were tiring, yet a fresh determinacy latched to my eyelids. “The end” was growing close and I was growing more and more desperate to be with it—to be with 1989. It seemed the end of an era to my eight-year-old mind, and I was crushed. Devastated. How could it leave!? How could it depart so quickly and never come back!? Was it really never coming back!? I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with it. I was mad at the year. Angry that it would enter my life so richly and yet hold the audacity to depart. Tears poured as the television dropped the Times square ball. I simultaneously made every effort to “save the year” by scooping its last breaths into a salad dressing bottle. 1989 was gone. Death had confronted me.

And it did so again last night.

After 89 incredible years (I didn’t put that number connection together until now), my grandfather died. It wasn’t a painful death, or an unexpected one, but it has been painful and unexpected, because it was death.

I went for a walk after I found out. I was at a friend's house, who lives on a street that somehow never ceases to catch my emotions off-guard. Massive trees shade it by day, while night decorates it with hints of moonlight, painting an exceptionally magical glow. Daylight was still at hand though, as I departed in search of some cognition of the dangling news. As the road neared its end, I turned left down a side street, intrigued by its backdrop of the day’s setting sun. Memories of my grandfather were flowing at this point, with strands of life’s questions sparking like fireworks. Red roses flirted with emerald grasses and blue-hued birds painted the landscape. I felt stunned. Awed. Challenged by life and death. And channeled toward some essence of greater Life and Governance over death. I couldn’t help but recall the day before, too, when similar feelings engaged me at the ocean. Waves so protective and unending…yet so intimate and aggressive in their pursuit of my presence on the beach.

I settled on the curb to watch the remaining beams of sun dip into the horizon. David Gray’s lyrics of, ‘…life in slow motion…somehow it don’t seem real,’ reverberated in my mind. It was the longest sunset I’ve ever seen. Minutes felt like hours and if it weren’t for brisk air and friends I wanted to return to, I would’ve stayed for the remainder of the night. I was paralyzed by the moment—the moment entering sorrow and death, and off the same fence, entering satisfaction and life.

I feel a lot like I did that New Year's Eve. My tears are challening the reality of my Grandfather's passing, fighting so hard to make death un-die. I just want to be with him. I just want to be with his life. But I can't. His time on earth has passed. Like 1989, his year is finished. What I know now, however, that I didn’t know as an eight-year-old, is that 1989 would never fully leave me. Given memories and memorable shapings (and being stuck in a glass jar in my attic), the reality of that year's existence can't leave me.

When we let reality in, it scars us. When we let ourselves be real, and let something be real with our selves, we’re touched in a way that can never fully leave. Though death became a man named my grandfather last night, etchings of that man’s life will never be fully lost. To that end, I am grateful.