Fighting tears and rage

Hello everyone 

My grandparents have tested positive. My grandma has tested positive last week and my grandpa today. The words I was scared of were uttered today: “Prepare for the worst” 

My grandma is an oncological patient and against all odds she is still alive (she was diagnosed when my mom was pregnant with me and I am 25 now) and she was really fighting last week but her fever has gone up, she has issues breathing and we cannot even get her to a hospital because there are no beds to hospitalize her. She managed to somehow talk to my aunt today and she said herself that she knows it’s the end and that no hospital will help.  

Grandpa has mild symptoms but he also has asthma. 

I have never felt so helpless in my life. I’ve been through shit, feared for my life but nothing compares to the feeling of just sitting around knowing that the people who were like parents to me might not make it to tomorrow and I cannot even see them or come close to them. I am at a point where I’ve cried so much that I feel completely dehydrated. I hate the fact that we cannot do anything for them other than sit and wait to see how it will go. 

When I say they have been like second parents for me, I am not kidding. Before I started school, whenever my dad would get really drunk and my mom had to go to work and my sister had to go to school, grandpa would get on a train, come and pick me up and he would take me to be with them until my dad is sober and it’s safe for me to be around him. Sometimes I wouldn’t understand why he had to take me away so I would start crying on the train station but he knew his spoiled granddaughter and he always came prepared with chocolates to bribe me to behave well. He joked back then that he was scared people might think he was trying to kidnap me and chocolate was the only way to stop that from happening.

He would also come and bring my mom money whenever we would be deep in debts because of my father’s drinking so that we could buy food.  

When my mom fled Bosnia in 1992 because of the war and came to Zagreb, my grandparents were already there and my mom came pregnant. She gave birth to my older sister and had to go to Germany to work because she had no money, no way of providing for my sister, my father was still in Bosnia and she needed money because she frankly did not know if she will have a place to live once the war is over. My grandma took care of my newborn sister while my mother was in Germany and she also took care of one of my cousins at that time. She is literally like a second mother for all of her grandchildren and she always tells embarrassing stories about us on family gatherings.  

Some of the rare childhood memories I still have are linked to my grandparents. From my grandma making me pancakes every morning when I would stay with them, praying with her (back when I was religious), grandpa sneaking in chocolate bananas for me and my cousin and so many more. There is nothing I love more in life than my grandma’s cooking.

And now they are in pain and suffering and after everything they’ve been through with us and done for their children and grandchildren, none of us can help. We can’t even make this easier for them, there is nothing we can do. 

And I am angry and sad and my emotions are all over the place and I am constantly having outbursts of tears and then I get angry again and it goes in a fucking circle and my eyes are burning and I cannot take this. I try to distract myself but it isn’t working. Write now I am trying to write this, write poems, just let it out but there are no words. There’s just pain. My mom is suffering, my whole family is falling apart emotionally and it’s all too much.  

I am just hoping they will stay with us, that they will find the strength to push through this goddamn disease and live to see more great-grandchildren but I have to get ready and if it hurts this much now I don’t even want to know what will happen if…. 

Please stay safe for yourself and those around you. I hope you are all doing well and thank you for being here.  

Luna 

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