one comes in, the other one goes out.
My grandmother has died. Hardly shocking considering she was 100 and had been fading for awhile, but stll - a bit sad.
Frankly at this point I'm starting to doubt my ability to cope with life if it ever, you know, just decided to be still for a while.
She had a long long life my grandmother, and mostly a tragic one (because if I lived to see my husband and children die, I don't know how long I'd want to hang around after that). She loved me a lot, and I loved her as much even though being loved by her was often difficult. Her love could be both toxic and brutal even though I know they weren't her intentions. So much stuff and bittersweetness interweaving through everything there.
I want to let go of everything but the good times. Remember her for those because they were there. Her mind was going so much towards the end that she was enjoying a rich social life with imaginary family and friends until her hold of reality was quite quite gone and she stopped recognising anyone and the last person she remembered was me. Actually the only person she remembered at the end. Bittersweetness and a strange kind of grief in that too.
Truthfully the person who I knew as my grandmother died in every conceivable way a year ago, and I've been mourning her loss ever since. So I've been grieving the death of her for a long time, today, it's simply the final step in the mourning process.
Letting go. Also being released. Because every person whose life had in some way revolved around my granny's emotional and physical needs (including me) is now free to seek their own way in the world. And she is free is as well because at the end the life she had she would not have wanted.
I loved her and was loved. She had the death I would have wished for her - silent, in her sleep. She slipped away in the unobtrustive manner she never had in life, and I wish and hope that everyone she ever loved came to meet her at the gate.
Frankly at this point I'm starting to doubt my ability to cope with life if it ever, you know, just decided to be still for a while.
She had a long long life my grandmother, and mostly a tragic one (because if I lived to see my husband and children die, I don't know how long I'd want to hang around after that). She loved me a lot, and I loved her as much even though being loved by her was often difficult. Her love could be both toxic and brutal even though I know they weren't her intentions. So much stuff and bittersweetness interweaving through everything there.
I want to let go of everything but the good times. Remember her for those because they were there. Her mind was going so much towards the end that she was enjoying a rich social life with imaginary family and friends until her hold of reality was quite quite gone and she stopped recognising anyone and the last person she remembered was me. Actually the only person she remembered at the end. Bittersweetness and a strange kind of grief in that too.
Truthfully the person who I knew as my grandmother died in every conceivable way a year ago, and I've been mourning her loss ever since. So I've been grieving the death of her for a long time, today, it's simply the final step in the mourning process.
Letting go. Also being released. Because every person whose life had in some way revolved around my granny's emotional and physical needs (including me) is now free to seek their own way in the world. And she is free is as well because at the end the life she had she would not have wanted.
I loved her and was loved. She had the death I would have wished for her - silent, in her sleep. She slipped away in the unobtrustive manner she never had in life, and I wish and hope that everyone she ever loved came to meet her at the gate.