Death is Strange

My grandpa died this morning. I got messages on my phone about it--strange, impersonal recordings. I don't know how exactly I expected it to end. I don't know how it will affect the family, really. I'm still trying to figure out how it affects me. What is Grandma thinking right now? How does one really deal with the death of the one person you've spent almost every moment of over 60 years with? Every smile. Every tear. Every pondering question. Every joy and every pain. My heart is rent for her. I still think she does not know the Great Comforter, whose heart bleeds along with hers for the death of one Henry George Ripley, dearly known as Rip to his friends and family. He was a mischievous man, my grandfather, but one of deep devotion to his family, to work, to pursuit of peace and justice. But although he was in his younger years devoted to "religion", I never discovered if he had a relationship with the Great I Am. Same story with Grandma. I would ask, and get turned away or met with silence. So I tried sharing my life for a year with them, trying to SHOW Jesus. And though I got questions, they never seemed to grasp that His heart was for them as well. So yes, my soul aches.
I spent three months this year taking care of both of them, getting to know them in their frail years. I helped dress them, bathed them, fed them, cleaned up after their messes, listened to stories, sang songs for their now tuneless ears. I shared life with them. And they, in that brief time, became most dear to me. They became more than distant grandparent figures, only there as the parents of my mother. I am part of their legacy. But I want to be near them. I want to pursue a deeper existence with them. And Grandma can't even move anymore. And I am in school.
So, since my tears are dry and cannot fall, I write my grief here. I spill out my tears in words. Short, punctuated pain.