in my time of dying, I want nobody to mourn
So I haven't updated this thing in a while. Mainly because I was dealing with exams, then I didn't have a laptop for a month, then I was traveling, and then all this shit was happening and I wanted to talk about it on LJ but I would always go to my flist first and then get too caught up reading it because so many things are happening in my friends' lives and I haven't been keeping up with them. /run-on
Anyway. My grandmother died the other day. A week after my aunt died, actually. Neither case was really a surprise, and honestly for both of them it was a mercy. I didn't have much of a reaction to my aunt's death other than that, because I didn't know her very well. And I do feel bad about that, and bad that I hadn't seen her in years, but at the same time I'm mostly just glad that she didn't have to breathe through a tube anymore. I feel like she can now be at peace.
I had more of a reaction to my grandmother's death, because I've always felt close to her. And yet, I haven't been horribly grief-stricken, mainly because I feel like I've been grieving for a long time. Every time I went to see her I would leave frustrated and upset and angry and depressed, because she seemed like a cruelly mocking shadow of what she once was. Not to say she was completely senile or anything, because she was pretty sharp for a 95-year-old, or that she was completely disabled, because she could still get around fairly well for a 95-year-old. Communicating with her was so difficult though, because she was at least a little senile, and mostly she just couldn't hear anything because she refused to get a hearing aid. And it was so sad to see her completely helpless and dependent on others -- and God she hated it -- because she was always someone who defined herself by her assertiveness and control over her own life, and what she perceived as strength. Some would say that trusting others to take care of you takes strength, but she wasn't that kind of person. So it was just depressing, and her long, slow decline was cruel, and she saw it that way too. She would have rather just gone, she said it numerous times. So when she did go, it was almost a relief. I feel like she's free to be remembered as she was -- as an opinionated, ornery matriarch who taught me to play cards and hit me with her cane when I messed up her hair.
But of course I'll still miss her presence in my life. And now I have no grandparents. And none of them got to see me graduate. Because while my exams ended in April, our convocation was on June 16th. And that was another bucketful of emotions. I looked back on the last four years, which were full of a lot of failure and disappointment, and a lot of success and happiness, though very little of the latter was in my academic life. I tried to make peace with my academic performance in university -- because, really, who else in my family has a degree in science? And it's not like I failed. Objectively, I have a decent GPA. Not enough to get me into a lot of grad schools, but still higher than a lot of people at U of T. Mainly I tried to put all the insecurity and self-hatred that U of T fostered aside, and just be happy that I accomplished something. Because I did! Graduation is an accomplishment.
And yet I wasn't allowed to walk away without one last little affront. The order of the procession -- and of the handing out of diplomas -- was Arts degrees, then Science degrees, and each group was subdivided into people graduating with high distinction, people graduating with distinction, and people just graduating, and those groups were subdivided by alphabetization. So I was at the very end. I don't mind not having distinction on my degree -- well of course I do, but I can deal with it -- but being physically segregated based on that in front of hundreds of people was hard to take, especially because most of my friends were towards the front and graduating with distinction. All that still might have been okay, except that we went up to the front in order to be presented to the Chancellor, and then we were taken back into the outside hallway and given our diplomas and pictures were taken, and then we were filed back to our seats. Only they didn't wait for the last 10-15 of us to come back into Convocation Hall before they started playing the national anthem, and we were actually walking through the hall to our seats when they started the Chancellor's procession out of the hall. I found it very rude, though I'm sure it was just a bit of miscommunication/old people wanting to go to the washroom.
Even so, all that aside, it was a very happy day for me. I felt accomplished and beautiful and stately in my stately robes, and it was a beautiful day full of congratulations and good food and happy times with my friends and my parents. I think I mainly just really liked having my parents there. I miss them all the time, even having lived away from home for four years now.
Point is, this is a very turbulent time in my life. And this is just one fraction of all the stuff going on. But I'll just leave it there for now.
Anyway. My grandmother died the other day. A week after my aunt died, actually. Neither case was really a surprise, and honestly for both of them it was a mercy. I didn't have much of a reaction to my aunt's death other than that, because I didn't know her very well. And I do feel bad about that, and bad that I hadn't seen her in years, but at the same time I'm mostly just glad that she didn't have to breathe through a tube anymore. I feel like she can now be at peace.
I had more of a reaction to my grandmother's death, because I've always felt close to her. And yet, I haven't been horribly grief-stricken, mainly because I feel like I've been grieving for a long time. Every time I went to see her I would leave frustrated and upset and angry and depressed, because she seemed like a cruelly mocking shadow of what she once was. Not to say she was completely senile or anything, because she was pretty sharp for a 95-year-old, or that she was completely disabled, because she could still get around fairly well for a 95-year-old. Communicating with her was so difficult though, because she was at least a little senile, and mostly she just couldn't hear anything because she refused to get a hearing aid. And it was so sad to see her completely helpless and dependent on others -- and God she hated it -- because she was always someone who defined herself by her assertiveness and control over her own life, and what she perceived as strength. Some would say that trusting others to take care of you takes strength, but she wasn't that kind of person. So it was just depressing, and her long, slow decline was cruel, and she saw it that way too. She would have rather just gone, she said it numerous times. So when she did go, it was almost a relief. I feel like she's free to be remembered as she was -- as an opinionated, ornery matriarch who taught me to play cards and hit me with her cane when I messed up her hair.
But of course I'll still miss her presence in my life. And now I have no grandparents. And none of them got to see me graduate. Because while my exams ended in April, our convocation was on June 16th. And that was another bucketful of emotions. I looked back on the last four years, which were full of a lot of failure and disappointment, and a lot of success and happiness, though very little of the latter was in my academic life. I tried to make peace with my academic performance in university -- because, really, who else in my family has a degree in science? And it's not like I failed. Objectively, I have a decent GPA. Not enough to get me into a lot of grad schools, but still higher than a lot of people at U of T. Mainly I tried to put all the insecurity and self-hatred that U of T fostered aside, and just be happy that I accomplished something. Because I did! Graduation is an accomplishment.
And yet I wasn't allowed to walk away without one last little affront. The order of the procession -- and of the handing out of diplomas -- was Arts degrees, then Science degrees, and each group was subdivided into people graduating with high distinction, people graduating with distinction, and people just graduating, and those groups were subdivided by alphabetization. So I was at the very end. I don't mind not having distinction on my degree -- well of course I do, but I can deal with it -- but being physically segregated based on that in front of hundreds of people was hard to take, especially because most of my friends were towards the front and graduating with distinction. All that still might have been okay, except that we went up to the front in order to be presented to the Chancellor, and then we were taken back into the outside hallway and given our diplomas and pictures were taken, and then we were filed back to our seats. Only they didn't wait for the last 10-15 of us to come back into Convocation Hall before they started playing the national anthem, and we were actually walking through the hall to our seats when they started the Chancellor's procession out of the hall. I found it very rude, though I'm sure it was just a bit of miscommunication/old people wanting to go to the washroom.
Even so, all that aside, it was a very happy day for me. I felt accomplished and beautiful and stately in my stately robes, and it was a beautiful day full of congratulations and good food and happy times with my friends and my parents. I think I mainly just really liked having my parents there. I miss them all the time, even having lived away from home for four years now.
Point is, this is a very turbulent time in my life. And this is just one fraction of all the stuff going on. But I'll just leave it there for now.