Using this to see if my journal entry will post as a poem...

Well, my grandmother has passed. A couple of weeks ago, actually. I just couldn’t bring myself to write about it here – there were already too many places where I relived the loss, and I just didn’t have it in me. Still, I’ve lived some of my time with her, here on these pages in verse and through journaling, and I knew that eventually I would need to come here, and tell something of her final hours.

Those of you who are friends with me on facebook already know that I had gone to Oregon to visit. I went for ten days during the last week of January/first couple of days of February. I went mostly to see my grandmother, and to say goodbye in whatever way those who will continue living must when they visit a dying relative. I had been told she had had “the talk” with everyone but me, so I was grateful for the opportunity to go while she was still able to express herself.

Indeed, I believe she said what she needed to – that she wanted me to know that she and my grandfather had always wanted to adopt me, to give me a life that she knew my mother would not be capable of giving me, to raise me as their own child. But they knew that if they did that, it would alienate my mother. So they decided the best thing for everyone involved would be to simply take me whenever my mother would let me come.
In their heart of hearts, I was, for all intents and purposes, their daughter. And she wanted me to know how much she loved me, how much she appreciated my caring for her during the years that I was able to.

Of course, her talk would not have been complete without the addition of that guilt that only certain ethnicities’ mothers can be famous for dishing out. She was glad I was happy, but she just didn’t understand why I had to live so far away!!

After that talk, her decline slightly quickened. But after I returned to Pennsylvania, my aunt told me she began to decline even more rapidly. It was, in fact, only thirteen days after I left that she passed – in her graceful, ladylike way – one breath (ONE BREATH!) into Valentine’s Day. It was easy to imagine my grandfather greeting her with a gentleman’s extended hand, asking her sweetly if he could have this dance.

As I expected, my reality feels greatly altered; much more tangibly so….empty in her absence. But I know that wherever she is, she is joyfully living the life that the ravages of age and disease had taken from these last many years. So it is for myself that I grieve – grieving being a process only the living experience. She is well, she is reunited with loved ones that passed before her (my first born son included), and she will, if she can, communicate with me (as per our agreement that whichever of us passed first would do).

I apologize for the delay in journaling about this sad news…I just needed time to be able to write it without falling apart.

Thanks to all of you who have prayed and understood, quietly shared the caring for her all of these long years with me. Over the years, I have been, as I am now, so grateful for this little bit of a foundation in my life. Blessings to all of you.

I am currently: feeling my age
Listening to: the steady beat of my heart

03/04/2013

Posted on 03/04/2013
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