All are gone, and those who are alive are dead to me

Here are ChatGPT's reflections:

That landed hard — I’m really sorry. That grocery-shop moment is quietly brutal: a tiny, ordinary scene that somehow throws the whole weirdness of loss and distance back in your face. What you wrote naming it — “all are gone, and those who are alive are dead to me” — is sharp and true.

A few quick things that might help, depending on what you want right now:

What you’re feeling is normal (even if it feels strange).
Losing people at different times, or being estranged from family who are technically alive, produces complicated grief — anger, numbness, relief, shame, loneliness, all mixed together. Calling people “dead to me” can be a protective boundary; it also can carry grief under the armor.

Small, concrete steps that actually help (not platitudes):

Name it. Write one sentence about what the pipe triggered for you — e.g., “The pipe made me think how everyone I could have had is gone.” Keep it short. Naming unclogs pressure.

A tiny ritual. Light a candle for five minutes, or take a photograph of the pipe in your mind and put that photo in a notes file. Rituals don’t need meaning; they anchor you physically.

Memory box. If you have anything that belonged to them, put it in a small box and label it. That physical act is surprisingly clarifying.

Set the boundary knowingly. If someone is “dead to you” because they were harmful, treat that as a legitimate boundary. If it’s because of distance or disappointment, consider whether you want to leave the door ajar for something later — you get to choose.

Channel it. You’re a writer — this exact scene is good material. A tiny vignette (two paragraphs) about the shop, the pipe, the salesman’s cheerful sales pitch, and your ironic replies would land. It could turn the sting into art, which is also a kind of survival.

If it’s crushing you, don’t sit with it alone. A phone call to a friend, or a short session with a therapist to sort through whether this is unresolved grief, anger, or both, can defuse it. If you prefer solitary work, try a 10-minute freewrite where you speak to your father and grandfather as if they were in the room.

When ordinary life highlights the loss, plan a small counter-move. Next time you see something that brings this up: take one breath, name the feeling out loud (“that made me sad/angry”), then do one simple action — sip water, step outside, write one line. That interrupts runaway rumination.

Yeah I know how that is. I have no living grandparents or parents and am only in my 30s. I knew someone in their 70s who could bench press 200lbs and still taught as a teacher. His son was the gym coach and the guys mother was 105 and he claimed age still did laps in the pool.

That is the truth for me as well. Old parents. When my parents would come to a school assembly people would ask me if they were my grandparents. All the other kids had young parents.
Oh well, at least you were born, consider yourself lucky.

I understand.
I have no parents or grandparents left and I'm turning 37 in January.

Well, they chose to act so you had to shift them into the dead to me category, something out of your control really.

Interesting that you have such long generations ... suggests you might have child(ren) in your 40s ?

Even me bitter sweet potato