As the scythe falls, it cuts down the tallest of them all
You should be glad that you are not in my family this year. Still feeling the wake from the last year's losses, my parents are preparing me for the loss of yet another grandparent -- this time, my Mom's mom.
She's always been my favorite grandparent and certainly the most healthy -- but unfortunately the oldest. It seems that this brave, fierce, 91 year-old full-blooded Irish woman who raised her orphaned siblings long before she raised her own children as a widow is slowly succumbing to a combination of bronchitis, a staph infection, and weak, fluttering ventricles that cause the pooling of blood in the heart -- a combination that would have killed most younger people very quickly. This is yet another testament to her strength, her fighting spirit. What I haven't spoken of yet is her pure heart that is incapable of any malice and that really doesn't have the capacity to see the bad bits in anyone -- she is the most non-judgmental, open, non-manipulative, and forgiving person I have ever met
What is shameful is that as much as I admire her, I've never been especially close to her. We moved around so much growing up that I never really got the opportunity to get to know her, and my mom, being like me and similarly ill-equipped to emote, never displayed her huge, amazing, and tremendous respect, love, and admiration of her with me until I was in college. In fact, I never had any clue that she felt much differently about her mother and her father-in-law when I was younger. Not having the time to write a hefty tome as to the reasons why, I'll say the difference between the two is like a cold, wide cavernous chasm. The reasons she never conveyed at least a glimmer of that to me when I was younger I will never understand since I think it would have helped me appreciate what I had a lot more, and maybe I never would have had to write the first sentence in this paragraph.
My parents keep saying "you should call her, it would cheer her up." I would love to. The problem is that neither have them have given me any of the contact information for the place where she has been admitted, making it impossible for me to call her or send her flowers or anything. I am genuinely baffled at the logic behind this, but at the same time secretly, shamefully relieved. I am very inexpert and unpracticed at dealing with death -- how would you talk to a woman who has submitted her own do not resuscitate order? I love the woman dearly, but I have no idea what I would say to her or how I would say goodbye to her -- over the phone no less.
Perhaps I saw this coming in May. She's always been so strong, so full of joi de vivre and laughter (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that she has a bad-ass sense of humor too), that I was frankly shocked to see how old, how frail she looked as she broke down and wept the tears that only a mother can weep over the body of her oldest daughter. It was scary to see her that way -- I had never seen her so vulnerable. I don't know that she had ever let herself be that way -- it was the first death after which she didn't have to be strong for those younger than her, those who depended on her for life. Whatever the case, I felt that it foreshadowed something.
I feel robbed. I still have so much to say to her and so much to learn from her, but I have no idea how to say it and no time left in which to glean it. Such is the way with mortality.
I love you, Grandma.
She's always been my favorite grandparent and certainly the most healthy -- but unfortunately the oldest. It seems that this brave, fierce, 91 year-old full-blooded Irish woman who raised her orphaned siblings long before she raised her own children as a widow is slowly succumbing to a combination of bronchitis, a staph infection, and weak, fluttering ventricles that cause the pooling of blood in the heart -- a combination that would have killed most younger people very quickly. This is yet another testament to her strength, her fighting spirit. What I haven't spoken of yet is her pure heart that is incapable of any malice and that really doesn't have the capacity to see the bad bits in anyone -- she is the most non-judgmental, open, non-manipulative, and forgiving person I have ever met
What is shameful is that as much as I admire her, I've never been especially close to her. We moved around so much growing up that I never really got the opportunity to get to know her, and my mom, being like me and similarly ill-equipped to emote, never displayed her huge, amazing, and tremendous respect, love, and admiration of her with me until I was in college. In fact, I never had any clue that she felt much differently about her mother and her father-in-law when I was younger. Not having the time to write a hefty tome as to the reasons why, I'll say the difference between the two is like a cold, wide cavernous chasm. The reasons she never conveyed at least a glimmer of that to me when I was younger I will never understand since I think it would have helped me appreciate what I had a lot more, and maybe I never would have had to write the first sentence in this paragraph.
My parents keep saying "you should call her, it would cheer her up." I would love to. The problem is that neither have them have given me any of the contact information for the place where she has been admitted, making it impossible for me to call her or send her flowers or anything. I am genuinely baffled at the logic behind this, but at the same time secretly, shamefully relieved. I am very inexpert and unpracticed at dealing with death -- how would you talk to a woman who has submitted her own do not resuscitate order? I love the woman dearly, but I have no idea what I would say to her or how I would say goodbye to her -- over the phone no less.
Perhaps I saw this coming in May. She's always been so strong, so full of joi de vivre and laughter (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that she has a bad-ass sense of humor too), that I was frankly shocked to see how old, how frail she looked as she broke down and wept the tears that only a mother can weep over the body of her oldest daughter. It was scary to see her that way -- I had never seen her so vulnerable. I don't know that she had ever let herself be that way -- it was the first death after which she didn't have to be strong for those younger than her, those who depended on her for life. Whatever the case, I felt that it foreshadowed something.
I feel robbed. I still have so much to say to her and so much to learn from her, but I have no idea how to say it and no time left in which to glean it. Such is the way with mortality.
I love you, Grandma.