It's not often

It’s not often that I make personal posts. But somedays, things feel larger than me. Sometimes, I want to share, get thing off my chest and to as many people who will read.

Last Saturday my dad called me to tell me that my Granny (his mother) had died suddenly. She was just talking, having a normal conversation with her caretakers, stopped mid sentence, and died.

I’d never lost a grandparent, and at 23, that’s a pretty good run. I still have a great~gandmother, even! I’d mever been to a funeral, only a couple of services for prayer.

It was hard, very hard, hearing that my Granny had passed. She’d been sick for the past couple years with dementia and various other things. Various illnesses is part of getting old, I know. My Papa took wonderful care of her, he saw her everyday.

I called my Papa after I got off the phone with my dad and it was difficult hearing how upset her was, he’s always been such a cheerful man, strong and such a gentleman. I told him I wouldn’t be able to make it out to the funeral, I was really sorry, but L.A. is so far from Florida and on such short notice…I couldn’t afford it! My PaPa said he understood, just keep the time in mind and pray during the funeral.

I called my Dad back not too long after and he was sounding upset. Really upset. He’d found my Mom on the floor (which explain why she hadn’t answered her phone earlier) and was having to take her to the hospital. Now, my mother going to the ER is nothing new. She suffers from Addisons, Lupus, diabeties, seizures, sjogrens, migraines, arthritus (part of the lupus), and several other thises and thats. She’s been sick for about 4 or 5 years now. So yeah, another ER trip. But it meant that my dad couldn’t make it to the funeral. He was going to miss his mother’s funeral to take care of my mom, something h’d learned from his own father from the way he took care of his mom.

It made me determined to make it to Florida to attend the funeral and represent my dad’s section of the family. I called my Aunt and she set me up with some frequent flier miles and I was set to come.

I stayed in my Granny’s old room the other night. She hadn’t been in there for 3 years, but the room was still heavy with her. She loved sunflowers and shetland sheepdogs and arts and crafts. I think she would have loved a PYO. I know stuff is just stuff, but when I see things I see memories or potential (a grow your own sunflowers kit really knocked me down). I think others feel the same about the belongings of their dearly departed. Just being in the room, where I can still remember her smiling and saying good bye from the last time I visited, already pretty ill.

Seeing some of her stuff and all that she was interested in began a chain of thought that i didn’t really finish til the next day, which was yesterday.

Yesterday was the visitation/viewing. Initially I had no desire to see the body, I’d never seen a corpse in person before and while I don’t mind such things, I didn’t want my last memory of Granny to be her body. Well, I could see her as soon as I walked in. i could see some of her hair and her arms abover the rim of the casket and I wanted to climb a tree.

Instead I walked up the aisle with my Papa, Aunt, and Uncle. There she was. She didn’t look horrible. She looked almost like she was sleeping except she never frowned like that. And she look somehow flat. My Granny was a large lady, jolly for sure. She just looked deflated, but the rest of her was pretty enough. There was make up on her arms that I didn’t care for, it looked gross. Seeing her was as hard as anything yet. She is dead. Gone. With God. My mind was playing tricks and I’d see her finger twitch and more commonly, her chest move like she was breathing. I had the same problem when I put my beloved dog Samson down. He was dead, but i kept thinking he was moving. It’s a subconsious hope, I know. Hope never dies.

The viewing was 3 hours. Over the next 3 hours I met a blur of family and friends of the family. And I listened…

I listened to all the things people were saying. I listened about my Granny’ travels, quirks, sense of humor, her talents and skills, I learned more and more about her that I never ever knew.

My chain of thought came to a completion of sorts. Crap, dude. Why don’t people talk about how awesome someone is before they die? Why does everyone wait until it’s too late? I know that you have to get to know someone on your own, but people were going on and on about things that I never knew, and I spend a lot of time with my Granny and Papa when I was younger, up until about 6 years ago.

It’s been driving me nuts. There are things I want to talk to her about now, only it’s to late. I can’t.

Today was the funeral, again, my first. It was a beautiful sermon, and the procession went to a National cemetary, so it was pretty cool seeing all the guards saluting as we went by. Thanks guys. My PaPa was a Major in the Airforce.

I guess the point of all this, besides needing to write it out AND post it AND share the memory of my Granny, is to say find out, if you can, as muh as you can from the people you care about. I know, I know it’s something everyone always says, and I don’t feel that I am conveying what I mean well enough in writing, but…find out what you can and in turn, tell people you know about how wonderful the people in your life are. I feel inspired by the life of my Granny, now. I love knowing more about her life and what she was like.

I am getting a bunch of her art supplies, I think she’ll be glad to know I am getting them. :3