I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time mourning lately. And I don’t like it.
This weekend I wrap my children in love and comfort as they say goodbye to their last grandparent. And since you all know that I’ve been an orphan for far too long, you can deduce whose mother has taken the hand of her husband and followed him Home. And while I'm not officially a member of that particular family, my heart is broken none-the-less.
It’s amazing how grief can minimize the problems of your small world. How it can encourage the outreaching of hands and hearts, and how it reminds everyone that all of our days here are numbered. Wasting any of them on petty and painful emotion is simply not to be borne.
And so we bid farewell to a woman who used to cut my children’s hair when she thought it was too long. The woman who would remind me when she thought I needed to lose a few pounds, and who would clean and re-arrange my house when visiting us when I was at work. I say goodbye to the woman who liked to remind me about how to discipline my children, and what lessons I might be forgetting to teach them. She also reminded us by her actions, that there were so many ways to show love and devotion- and that they didn’t always require words.
But what I think about today is that we bid good-bye to the only grandmother my children have ever known. She was a mother to me for as many years as my own, and they each loved a completely different version of me. And while it’s true that they were polar opposites, I learned just as many lessons from her than I did from my own.
And while we are all left here to pick up the pieces and mend broken hearts, she is soaring in heaven all the while holding the hand of the man she loved for over 60 years.
Not too shabby, J. Not too shabby.
