Blue Sky and Hard Rock

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing." I found this line when I first read his novel, The Sun Also Rises, years back. I remembered it last night.

Today, there's little tears left. But last night, this huge amount of regret and sadness was overcoming me as I laid on my bed and I had to talk to somebody who knew my grandfather well, who was with him in the last few years of his life.

I called my aunt and asked her if she thought he had been sad because I haven't kept in touch. She said no, that he understood. She said that he was very proud of me, that he was very glad that I'm doing something important for me now.

Inwardly, I was unable to accept those words, wishing for something other than his understanding. It sounds selfish I know but all I thought of was that it wasn't fair for him to understand, that it wasn't fair for him to just accept that his grandchildren had moved on with their lives without him and to just be happy for them.