Hangovers of a different variety-Day 26 #500wordsaday

I’m taking part in a 30-day writing challenge. See Kale & Cigarettes for details and check out the Facebook Group. Living in non-reality is nice. When we were at the beach, we were in a luxury condo thanks to some very gracious and generous family friends, pods of dolphins nested right out the window, gregarious and pushy pelicans dive-bombed the water looking for food, and the salty sea air made my hair look awesome. It’s easy to get lost in the moments of freedom and leisure.  I’m currently experiencing a beach hangover. I’m happy to be home. My bed is extremely comfortable, my pillow too. It’s filled with buckwheat hulls so it never collapses or gets hot. It took some time getting used to, but I would never go back to a regular pillow. I missed our dog and access to normal food. Where we stayed catered to tourists so the food at restaurants was expensive and bland. Not every restaurant of course, but many. My sunburn is finally starting to turn into a tan, which will last for approximately two days before it fades back to my normal skin color of translucent.  Next week Sadie and I are going to my maternal grandmother’s which also happens to be in South Texas. No beach, dolphins or pelicans, but she does have a pool and is super close to some killer Mexican food. That will be a different reality though. Not quite as relaxing but just as important. My grandmother is 93 and broke her hip in February. She uses a walker to get around her 5,000 square foot house and had to move from her upstairs bedroom into the guest room where I’ve stayed since I was born.  Changes like this are hard for me. I like things to stay the same. It’s, of course, easier that way. Seeing what is sometimes the natural evolution of life can be frightening. When my maternal grandfather suffered a stroke, we went to see him in the hospital. This was a man who still ran a thousand-acre farming business, drank a gallon of coffee a day, put Snickers in the fridge, and sometimes indulged in a Pabst Blue Ribbon. He was tall and purposeful. When we visited, he would take my sisters and me out on the farm to look for jack rabbits. Keep your eyes peeled, he would say. Gleefully, we bounced up and down in our seats scouring the earth for even a hint of bunny. I don’t actually know if we ever saw one, but that wasn’t the point, was it?  In the hospital, he was not that man. He was unconscious, had trouble breathing. I was terrified. My grandmother cried. I’d never seen that before. I was only 13 so seeing adults cry shook me to my core. Again, all of this was natural but I couldn’t immerse myself in it. I wanted to run. He died a few days later and life at Memaw and Papaw’s was irrevocably changed. The new way became the new normal of course. We all adjusted, adapted.  I reacted similarly when my father died. That is perhaps more understandable. It was one year before my grandfather’s death and my dad was killed by a drunk driver. Nothing about that is normal or part of any natural evolution. It was criminal, devastating, unthinkable. I shrouded myself in non-reality and stayed there for about ten years. Eventually I was able to pull myself out, adapt, adjust. The new way of life without my father became some sort of simulated normal.  Death is clearly not a beach vacation’s equivalent.  I don’t pretend to compare my hangover now to what we go through when we experience loss. But I like to visit my versions of non-reality. Sometimes it’s good to stay at the beach.