AisKara's Thoughts

When I originally started my blog on New Year’s Day, my intention was to write daily. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. I’m feeling disappointed in myself for that, but it’s not like there wasn’t a good reason for it…

My grandad died on Saturday, January 3rd, 2026. Well, actually, he was murdered. I still can’t bring myself to believe either of those sentences as I write them three days later.

This wasn’t the post that I wanted to be writing at this point. I was hoping that 2026 would start off like any other year, with my going back to work after the holiday break, trying to figure out how the year ahead would go, trying to figure out what my goals for 2026 would be. Not in a million years did I think that 3 days into the year, I’d be hearing about my grandfather’s death. Never in a billion years did I think that someone in my family would ever be murdered.

The whole thing just seems so surreal in the worst possible way. It feels like I’m living in a bad episode of NCIS or something. It feels like I’m in a nightmare that I still haven’t woken up from.

So many people in the past three days have told me that’s normal, that I’ll feel this way for a while and then things will go back to normal. What I think most of them don’t understand is that things will never go back to normal.

Usually, when a beloved family member dies, there’s some indicator beforehand. There’s things like disease and age that take a long time before they inevitably claim the life. In those circumstances, the people around have time to say goodbye, they have time to start processing their grief even before their loved one passes. It’s not easy, but in a lot of ways, having experienced that kind of grief, it’s easier.

This kind of grief is entirely new. Sure my grandad was 83, but he was the healthiest 83 year old I’d ever met. Other than some recent stomach problems, that were easily treated, he was in better shape than some people I know who are half his age. My grandad went out dancing every Friday night at his local chapter of the Legion. He’d dance and exercise at home. He’d go camping every year. He still tended to his gardens, growing all kinds of wonderfully beautiful flowers. He had a zest for life and was living it to the fullest he possibly could. It was not his time to go, but for some reason, some horrible cosmic joke if you believe in fate, someone decided it was.

On the night of January 3rd, my grandad was murdered in his girlfriend’s home by her abusive ex-husband. My grandad died protecting a woman that I’m sure he was growing to love.

A lot of people have said since then that he died a hero, but that’s just the kind of guy my grandad was. He was the type of man who would always lend a hand to a neighbour or a friend in need. He was always the type of man to stand up to bullied and abusers. He was always the type of man who stood for what was right. All things he taught me as I was growing up, and how I try to live my life.

Unfortunately, even with all of that, I don’t know how to even begin to deal with this. It’s great to say that my grandad died a hero, but he still died, he’s still gone from my life, ripped from me and my family suddenly and without warning, and it hurts so much. Not a day has gone by since then where I haven’t cried. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t broken down thinking of all of my regrets(I’ll save talking about those for another post).

How does anyone ever move on from this? How can anyone move on from this? There’s a really famous Junji Ito manga where human-shaped holes appear in a mountain, each one perfectly shaped to fit one specific person. This kind of feels like the opposite of that. Where there was once this perfect jigsaw puzzle, there’s now a perfectly shaped hole of my grandad in my heart and in my life. It feels like a piece of me has been torn out and like a Jenga tower, I’m crumbling down.

Worse is seeing the same happening to my dad and my siblings and trying to be the strong one and help them through it. I have to be the strong one because I’m the one that knows how to be strong this way, I’m the one that knows how to feel emotions and show them and process them. Emotions have always been seen as a kind of weakness in my family. None of us have ever had a very healthy relationship with them.

I hadn’t realized, though, the full impact years of therapy have had on me until this happened. It’s jarring coming back into a household where everyone is trying to hold themselves together because they think they’ll be judged by one of the others if they show their emotions. It’s jarring coming into a house and being told that we’ll all just have to “get over it eventually”, as if that’s going to help.

I think I’ve been helping them. I’ve been encouraging everyone to just let it out, to just let us all feel our emotions together through this absolutely horrible and horrific event, to know that we all have each other’s backs through this.

Yet, even then, how much help can I really be when I’m missing so many of the pieces myself? How am I supposed to help my family when I can’t even pull my own head above water to stop myself from drowning?

And through all of this, I have to figure out how to go back to work. I have to figure out how to face my colleagues who are going to ask me how my holidays were and have to tell them that they were great except my grandad was murdered at the end of them. My work policy is only one day off for bereavement in the case of a non-direct relative, no exceptions for the extenuating circumstances. I’ve already taken 3 days off, eating into the vacation and sick time that I’m going to need to take care of the baby that my partner will be giving birth to in three short weeks. I can’t take any more time off knowing that I’ll need it for parental leave, knowing that I’ll need it to go to New Brunswick in the Spring to bury my grandfather now. Yet, how am I supposed to go back to work? How am I supposed to work through the tears that keep coming? How am I supposed to provide the same quality of work that I did before all of this happened?

I have so many questions, and I don’t even know where I can go to start to find the answers.