For My Grandma

I don't know if you have this problem. Maybe it's a woman thing in general. I think it is. Sometimes it comes in handy and sometimes I swear I'm ADD. It's the ability (or disability) to think about a bajillion things at once. Oh my gosh, the laundry! Add that to the to do list. You see what I mean? I'm hoping I can maybe only write about one subject at a time. We'll see if I have any success with that.

There is someone who has been on my mind for days. My grandma. Not just for days. She passes in and out of my thoughts pretty regularly. Her and my granddad together. The anniversary of her passing was on the third. Since she passed I've been looking for her. In my actions, the actions of my dad, my siblings, even my own children. Searching for what she left behind. My grandma wasn't anyone history books will write about. She worked until she got married and then she stayed home with the kids and kept the house and the family running. She survived the Great Depression and World War II. She got baptized when she was forty and expressed herself through art. I still remember watching Bob from "Joy of Painting" with her. I'm still collecting information about her because for her, whenever we came over she only wanted to hear about us. And so much happens in your past, I imagine I'll forget a lot when I get up in years as well.

The hardest thing about her death was the way she died. She was diagnosed with inoperable brain brain cancer in the fall of 2010. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas with her but she was gone by April. That's not how grandmas are supposed to die. They slip away with the angels at night. Their bodies grow full of years. So full that they just can't carry the years anymore and they slip out from under the weight and fly away. Grandmas are not supposed to be threatened by cancer. Their bodies are not supposed to be ravaged and wrecked. You see, my grandma was the caretaker. She was 80 and had just had her knee replaced because she was looking after my granddad. He was a few years older than her, already walked with a cane and his mind was starting to go. Grandma was still driving, doing everything to help granddad. We had all thought granddad was going to go first, or at least that was my logic. And then the cancer came and wrecked everyone's plans. And it's not fair.

Fairness is where my logic is wrong, though. If I get to decide when it is fair for someone to die or not, I'm playing God. I have a hard enough time playing the role as myself. I could no more choose her end then I can mine. In the end, she did fly away. Not from years, but from pain. She wasn't alone. You were there to meet her.

Granddad passed within a year and a half, in his sleep. They had been married 62 years and only had to spend a year and a half apart. Of course we knew that he wouldn't stay long without her. Why would he want to? Sure there were children and grand-children, even great grand-children, but the love of his life was calling him home. He passed within two days of her birthday. His mind had slipped away pretty quickly after she passed but I still think he remembered her birthday. Maybe he forgot why the day wasy important but in his heart he felt her.

I feel her too. In the kitchen when I use her old dishes, when the cardinals come to eat at the birdfeeder. I see her in the face of my daughter. Oddly enough, one of her brothers gave her the nickname Ya-Ya, which means "grandmother" in Greek. They are both still around. We carry them with us in our hearts and memories and even though the end wasn't wrapped up in a pretty bow like I had hoped, it's not really the end anyway, so that's okay