My grandma died two days ago.
The past couple of days have been weird. I've never had anyone I know die before, let alone a family member. The thing is, I've never felt like my family is particularly tight-knit so I was kind of surprised about how much it affected me. I think I talked to her more in the past couple of months when she took a turn for the worse than I ever did before. I used to only see her maybe twice a year even though I always lived within a 45 minute drive and, for awhile, a lot closer than that. Now I live 2300 miles away and I feel guilty that I didn't talk to her more or visit with her more when I had the chance.
It's hard to realize that I don't know much about her, but when I think about the things I do know, it makes me realize the opportunity I've missed by not taking the time to know her better. She grew up in South Dakota but she left because she wanted to see the world. I don't know her whole story, but she went to Michigan and Florida and wound up in Kentucky. She was first generation German so she had a slight German accent which caused her some problems during WWII. She started smoking when working in a factory because smokers got smoke breaks and non-smokers didn't get any breaks at all. She didn't stop smoking when my grandpa died of a heart attack, but she quit cold turkey when my mom had my sister and said she wouldn't bring her baby to a house full of smoke. She raised five kids and was a widow for far longer than she was a wife. She was opinionated and strong-willed, even at age 92. She was frustrated and sad because the arthritis in her knees made it hard for her to walk more than 10 feet and the glaucoma and macular degeneration caused her to be almost completely blind.
There are so many gaps in that story that I'll never be able to fill in.
One thing that I frequently do is stop and think "Am I truly happy doing what I doing, right now, in this moment?" Most of the time the answer is yes, even if I'm just watching TV and crocheting or reading a book. But I've been thinking the past couple of days that maybe that isn't the right question to ask. Maybe I should be asking "Am I making the most of this moment?" Because there are so many things that I want to do; so many plans that I have. All too frequently, I put my bigger goals on the back burner and focus on the smaller ones. Sure, finishing a blanket feels good, but when my goal for the day was to work on NaNoWriMo, it's still kind of a failure.
I need to make the time that I have count. I have lists of things I want to accomplish but they never quite get done or, sometimes, even started. And I have all kinds of excuses, money and time being the main ones, but they're still excuses. I firmly believe that if you truly want something then it will happen which makes me wonder if I just don't want anything badly enough. Shouldn't you have some goal, some over-arching reason for your life? I think that people do, and that it's different for everyone. For some it's a certain career, to be a parent, to find true love, to make a difference in the world . . . I thought for me it was just to be happy, however that might come about. But it's so intangible, I don't really know how to get there. So sometimes I feel like I'm flailing through life, following wrong paths and missing the signposts.
It makes me feel helpless. And maybe that's part of the reason why my grandma's death means so much more to me than I thought it would. For a long time I thought I was afraid of old people, but eventually I realized I was afraid of being helpless. Not being able to see or hear or move, not being in control. And the terrifying knowledge that things were never going to be better than the way they were the day before. Maybe those things aren't as scary if you've lived a long and full life, but to me, right now, it's almost paralyzing. I don't want to be 92 years old and feel like I've wasted my life.
So I'm going to make a concerted effort to pull myself out of these doldrums I've been in for the past couple of days and, instead of lamenting opportunities missed, do my best to celebrate my grandma by following through on my dreams and not backing down because something is hard.
It does make me happy to think that, after over 40 years apart, she's with my grandpa again.
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