Can't Stop Loving You

I hate Phil Collins.

That's a lie. I don't actually hate Phil Collins. For the most part I enjoy his music. He has that soft-rock poppy sound my mother enjoys listening to. The kind you would find on Mix 94.1 or Fly 92.9. His music has that lovers soul of Marvin Gaye mixed with some 80s synthesizers. With the exception of the work he did for Disney's Tarzan (awful movie in which I think completely ruined his music), I enjoy Phil Collins.

But I hate him.

At least today, when I was getting dinner and his song "Can't Stop Loving You" just so happened to softly float out of the speakers in Woodworth's dining area. For some reason that song, and I don't think it has anything to do with the lyrics, triggers memories from my younger days. By that I really mean I have flashbacks of Pittsburgh.

I'm an all-around Ohio girl. Fairfield has always been home sweet home, and I'm proud to call the Nasty Nati my home city. But I can't deny that Pittsburgh has been the city to truly capture my heart. Ever since I can remember I have enjoyed it. Its rolling hills, its die-hard football fans, the entire essence of it. Every year my family and I would go up to Pittsburgh for Christmas and sometimes for Easter. And every year I looked forward to that trip.

2009 was the first year I did not go to Pittsburgh.

I knew at a young age just what Pittsburgh meant to me. I remember being in my grandparents backyard, taking it all in and thinking to myself "Here I am, in Pittsburgh." You know the saying, "live in the moment?" Well I can say, without a doubt, that those times in Pittsburgh were times where I truly lived in the moment. And I always knew that.

The last time I was in the Steel city was September of 2008 for my cousin's wedding. And since that time I have been craving to go back. Homesickness can occur with places that aren't really considered your home, at least not by others. But for Pittsburgh, it as a part of home. It's a comfort zone, a safety blanket. I can go there and feel comfortable. I can reminisce on parts of my childhood. I can proudly sport my black and gold. I feel happy, and content, and free. Those streets are a part of me. And after about a year and a half of separation, I miss them terribly.

The streets aren't the only ones I miss.

The reason my family and I would visit Pittsburgh was to visit my grandparents on my mom's side. Ed and Ruth Syska. They married at a young age, and my grandma had her first child before she was 21. My mother grew up in a yellow brick house on 4th Avenue in Laurel Gardens, right down the street from North Hills High School. And over 18 years, that little yellow brick house became a second-home to me.

There is much I could say about my grandparents, but to sum it up: I loved them. And to see them go was one of the toughest experiences.

My grandpap passed away when I was a junior in high school. He had cancer and was living in a nursing home. But to be honest, I don't think it was the cancer that killed him. It was the fact that he had lost his wife to alzheimer's. The fact that he couldn't care for her anymore. The fact that his wife, the love of his life, could barely function, let alone remember who he is. He didn't die from cancer. He died from a broken heart.

My grandma passed away a little over a year later, but her death was more of a relief than a tragedy. After seeing her suffer, seeing her forget who I was, forget her own life I was relieved to know she was no longer trapped in her own personal hell. The last time I saw her I promised myself I would never go back...the nursing home was too cruel. Constantly surrounded by death, I don't understand how anyone could work though. It literally feels as though life itself has been sucked out of you. I also swore I would never lay eyes on that building again. Unfortunately I can't erase those images from my mind.

But the truth is they're gone. I can miss them all I want, it's not going to change anything. All I have left are the memories that still linger in the back of my mind and tattooed on my heart. And sometimes all it takes is just a melody to remember what I can't stop loving.

Damn you Phil Collins.