Andrew Riesmeyer

I have never been so devastated.

I don’t even know where to begin. My grandmother passed away yesterday. She was the most wonderful woman in the entire world. From the day I was born she has been a constant force of good in my life. I don’t know what the most common relationship is between grandchildren and their grandparents, but I have no trouble saying that she was the best there could have ever been. She lived to be a grandmother.

Wednesday morning she lost her fight to a cancer in her lungs she had been battling since February. I keep trying to see a positive angle in this situation and I try to understand it and wrap my brain around it but I have to admit that I’m still in shock. I am saddened by the fact that I am on vacation in Prague and wasn’t around during her final days. I don’t know that this anger is healthy - factually there is no way we could have anticipated what transpired - but I still don’t understand any of it. This is the first time I’ve ever lost anyone very close to me, and it’s an empty, caustic feeling that can only be learned by experience.

I admire her for her faith, even in light of this.. and my extended family’s constant care and assistance in these past few months. I spoke briefly to my grandfather yesterday after learning the news, I am sad for him and what the future holds. I can’t comprehend living with someone for almost 60 years and wake up one day without her. I feel as the past 21 hours have been a complete blur. Soon enough I fear that I will become devoid of any emotional cognizance and maybe that’s a survival mechanism, I don’t know.

I’m flying back to Heathrow tonight to be in Chicago by Friday afternoon. In all of this, everything here is the same as it was yesterday. The sun is out, sending streaks of divided light through separations of branches onto the lobby of the hotel, slowly adding and subtracting to their mass as the wind blows the trees. Maybe that is God. I don’t know. It’s static and painful and I just want to go home.

Date: 06.10.10 Time: 06:06 AM
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Blue Eyes.

All the lights on and you are alive
But you can’t point the way to your heart
So sublime, when the stars are aligned
But you don’t know
You don’t know the greatness you are

Date: 06.08.10 Time: 06:47 AM
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A day in the life:

I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They’d seen his face before
Nobody was really sure
If he was from the House of Lords.

I saw a film today oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
but I just had to look
Having read the book
I’d love to turn you on

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke,
and Somebody spoke and I went into a dream

I read the news today oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
I’d love to turn you on

Date: 05.28.10 Time: 15:04 PM
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The only thing the past three years have taught me…

Nothing is ever final.

Date: 05.15.10 Time: 03:58 AM
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