I really do. They say they help people, but I can't believe that.

The smell of antiseptic makes me queasy, the bare halls full of people but devoid of life.
Hospitals can reduce a human being into nothing more than charts and machine readouts.
It's cold as death there, no passion, no warmth.

I had to see my strong, fiery Cajun grandmother be reduced to laying in a bed with machines telling her when to breathe. I had to watch the strongest woman I knew cry out in pain as her organs began to fail.

I had to listen to the doctors say there was nothing more they could do. After all this time, they said there's nothing they can do....After all this suffering, they're helpless.
And they say they help people. Bah!

But it's all over now, it's time for me to move on.
My spicy, charismatic grandmother is in a better place.

She used to build dragsters and race against the boys.
She won.

She met my grandfather at a truck stop.
She was a waitress, he was a trucker. Classic story.
She raised five children by herself as my grandpa continued to drive cross country.

Everywhere she went, she brought light into the room, a dance to your feet. Life never seemed dreary around her because you knew there was nothing this little firecracker couldn't handle.

She was a no nonsense woman. She wasn't afraid to say what was on her mind. She wasn't afraid to live whole heartedly. She was passion, she was love.

And now she's gone. All I have left are the memories and the lessons she gave me.

I'm not dealing with this very well... In my family, the women don't cry while the men weep like scared school children. She taught us that. She taught us how to take your sorrow, put it in a box, and put it away.

Well, my box never shuts good. My sister is a rock now...she perfected the family secret. I, on the other hand, never know when the lid will fall off of my box.

It's funny trying to imagine putting everything my grandmother told me into a single box. She was always larger than life, more than you could chew.

So now I'm left holding the torch. And it's burning me. Not the bright, warm flames of my grandma, nor the consuming fire that is how my family grieves.

I'm smoldering. I'm slowly burning, burning from the inside out. I've got to either stoke the flames or smother them, and it’s a battle I'm still fighting.

All I need is time, and I pray that's what I'll get.