It's 2 in the morning and I am getting my license in 6 hours and I can't sleep.

As I was laying in bed thinking about things, I remembered how right before my grandfather died he told me he couldn't wait to see me drive. I remember it. We were in the hospital room with him, and he was lying there on his back looking all spacey, and he turned to me with a smile on his face and said it. I smiled back. It really hurt to smile too, like it was going to happen. The doctor had said two weeks.

My mom took my driving today to practice parallel parking and shit like that. We went on the highway and wound up driving to my grandmother's house. It was the first time I'd been there since my grandfather died. The weeds in the front of the yard were a little overgrown, and when we got inside my grandmother was in her pajamas watching TV. Normally the dog would be barking, but she had died too just shortly after my grandfather. It's been a good three months, and nothing major has changed inside the house. It seems bigger, and some things have been moved slightly. It's always been warm in that house. But tonight it wasn't.

I sat in her kitchen eating pasta. Now that I think about it, I realize I was waiting for something. Waiting for my grandfather to walk into the room and smile at me and I would tell him everything. Tell him about work, tell him about the city, that I'm getting my license tomorrow. I feel like such a stupid little kid who doesn't understand what death is. But then again I don't. He is the first close person to me ever to die, and I really didn't know what to expect. After he first died I was pretty much numb. I forgot what he looked like a little bit, and I couldn't quite remember his voice. I couldn't see or hear him at all. I had a couple memories of him and that was it, all my emotions and recollections were nowhere. I always thought that the whole "realization" thing would come like a slap across the face. But now I see that it comes in tiny bits and pieces. It's only now I can see him sitting on the couch with his head tilted back taking a nap while he wears a white undershirt and khakis. That I can remember going there for Christmas dinner and I was wearing my sweatshirt and flannel pants and on the way home I listened to my U2 CD. Going to the park every Sunday during the summer and he would buy me ice cream and there would always be so many blankets in the car and a gallon of water and I would never drink it unless I was dying of thirst because I hated tapwater. Little bits and pieces come trickling in, and I remember him better now than I did three months ago. It's still so hard to take. I don't understand how or why but I just want this part to be over. I'm afraid it never will be. And now, I just remembered all the 4th of Julys we spent over there. As I remember each little piece I cry about it, which smudges my eyeliner that I neglected to take off.

When we were there tonight, I could feel the tension between my mother and grandmother. When it was time to go my mom didn't even say good bye. She hates my grandmother. She holds her accountable for his death because my grandmother didn't believe in doctors and wouldn't let him go to one until it was too late. But her hate stems from more than just that. There's a lot of things that went on before I was even born. The other day my mother told me that I have to forgive people who were mean to me because I would carry around the hate forever and it would ruin my life. Sometimes we give the best advice to others when we really need to hear it ourselelves. Maybe that's why we say it out loud in the first place.

I don't know what the point of this entry is. Maybe it is just a realization of how my life used to be a certain way and now it will never be that way anymore. There was a time when college was so far away and we used to go to my grandparent's house every Sunday for dinner and I had never even heard of The School for Film and Television. There was a time when I didn't know half the people I know now, when I didn't work, when I didn't have a cell phone, when I didn't have this stupid onine diary. But I guess things change and we accept them and move on no matter how painful it is. I don't think I will ever move on. Going to that house will still conjure up the same memories, but I'll just get used to feeling that way and be able to deal with it better.

I really wish he was alive to see this. I really wish he was alive when I went to the city and I wish he could see me graduate this coming spring. More than anything I wanted him to see me graduate. Thinking about the extra ticket we'll have now really, really gets to me. But I'm the type who believes in life after death, or something like that. I really do believe he can see me now, he knows what I'm typing, he'll see me get my license. I guess there's some consolation in that but honestly it isn't much. It's hard to grasp things as really being over when they've never been that way before. I'm used to always having an eraser or a delete key or something in case I do something I don't like. I still don't get it and God knows if I ever will.