When i woke up yesterday i checked my email like i usually do before getting ready for work. In it there was a message from my dad saying that my grandmother had died the day before at around noon and that he’d be heading back to Tampa at 5pm. At first i have to admit that the only thing i saw was that ‘grandma’ had died, and my thoughts went straight towards my other grandma. Probably because i hadn’t seen grandma Lane in about 8 years and when i had she didn’t remember who i was. She has been in a nursing home now for about 9 years and had dementia/alzheimers. She couldn’t remember who we were and with me living across the country i didn’t have many opportunities to see her. Needless to say (although i just did) my initial thoughts weren’t even directed her way.
I feel a little bit shitty about that.
Even in my youth i didn’t have a close relationship with my dad’s mom. We’d rarely see her although she lived in the same state. She also wasn’t what you’d think of when you thought of the stereotypical grandmotherly type. She was into computers and bbs’s (pre-internet). She wrote. When i look back now i have a lot of similarities with her – more than i ever thought.
Her wishes were to be creamated and buried with her second husband, so there really won’t be any type of ceremony. She didn’t know anyone in Tampa (where she passed) and I suspect most of her family is long gone. It makes me sad that she died alone. I feel bad for my dad who has to shoulder all the responsibilities of seeing to her final wishes and for all the weeks he visited her at the nursing home alone. That he is missing now a father and a mother.
It is really the first death i have experienced. Aside from a good friend who died in his early 20s this is the first relatively close family member that has passed. It is strange not knowing how to feel, but there is definitely a sense of loss. A realization that we are mortal and that a day like this is in all of our futures.
You say hope, i say that's where i'm going 