The End

It’s not when you’re 13, 18, or even 21. You become an adult the first time your heart breaks.

I was 16.

It’s not what you think. Call off the witch hunt for some poor girl who is now in her late twenties. My kingdom for a female who made me feel that happy before she made me feel that sad; a dragon truly worthy of believing in and chasing. I guess that’s why they call them heroines. There I go again talking about women. Life would be so much more productive if I were asexual. Back to my figurative Bar Mitzvah...

I was home alone. My dad was traveling and my mom had taken the ferry off the island to visit the hospital again. I'd survive, there was a pizza in the freezer. It was the summer before the Christmas my life would change forever and I would get a cell phone, so our only lifeline was our landline. We screened our calls. I would have picked up anyway but since Mom’s voice was just a half pitch lower I grabbed the phone a half ring sooner. There is no useful transition with these things. Hello leads directly to he’s gone. I cried, she cried, we cried, then I had to figure out how to cook the pizza.

Preheating the oven gave me a few minutes to think in place. Some rationalizations poured in at least. He was well into in his 70’s, an outcome that a 16-year-old version of himself likely would have jumped at in Vegas. But my brain was not fully formed and I grew up with stem cells and Oprah, so I was having much more trouble. Everything was okay when I focused on the periphery and complex elements of it all, but everytime I circled back to the simple issue at hand - my grandfather was no longer present with us - that’s when everything crashed back down. The oven beeped to welcome in the pizza and allowed my brain to dodge the simple reality again for a second and step back. 

But you can only play Jenga for so long before it all comes to an end.