I'm kind of mixed up right now...I'm sad that my grandmother is gone, because she's been one of my favorite people and I really loved her...I miss her. But at the same time I'm relieved because she had been having so many health problems, and now it's over. It wasn't all that unexpected, although I didn't expect her to go now. She had seemed to be doing better for a bit.
So I don't know. One moment I'll feel really sad about it, and the next I don't want to think about it, but that just doesn't seem right. And kind of I wish I had been able to visit her before she died...but I guess it's good that my last memory of her was when she was doing ok and the family was all there.
I'm not even sure it's completely sunk in...I don't know if it ever will. I can't help but wonder what she's doing right now, what she's thinking. She said she wondered what it would feel like to go, so it makes me happy to know that she finally found out what she was so curious about. She must be really happy right now...I feel like she's in the place she really belongs. It makes me think of the time she read us the Last Battle (well, the many times I guess...) and she read the part where they go through the door in the stable and end up in the Real Narnia, and they see their parents waving at them from Real England...it just seems like it must be like that for her. She's going to get to see Jesus, and her mother, and father (who died when she was four) and her baby girl. So in that sense I'm happy...when I think of her I think she must be very, very happy and curious. So that does make me smile. I almost wish I could talk to her right now and ask her what it's like...
And I guess I feel selfish, too. There's this part of me that wishes I didn't have to worry about this right now, and it makes me feel heartless. It's not at all that I don't care, but that feeling's still there. I guess the reason it is there is that I feel I can accept her being gone, since I know she truly belongs where she is. But I can't go on as if nothing happened, and I don't know how to act now, or quite how do deal with it myself. Thinking of her, I'm happy, because somehow I don't think of her as gone, or dead, but alive and happier than she's been in a long time.
Well, I guess that's all I have to say right now...and I leave still kind of confused, but sure that I will better be able to deal with it as time goes on.
Thanks for listening. :-)
4 comments:
As I told Julie-Anna, I was in similar circumstances 2 years ago with my great-grandmother Naomi. She also was ailing (mainly from dementia, considering she was 102), and we all thought she was going to pass on at some point but didn't know just *when* it would happen.
Though I wished to leave her in peace, I was sent to her place to read to her while she was still around. That was probably one of the most fulfilling tasks ever assigned to me.
I didn't care that she had pretty much forgotten her own great-grandson (she simply dubbed me "that big guy", since I towered at least a foot over her). Despite that, I managed to crack her up by reading 4 hours' worth of Dave Barry. A month or so later, she passed on, but I was glad I invested 4 hours of my time before it happened.
Getting over her loss was a different story. I don't know how it happened, but I kept my grief hidden from casual observers. One would think that I was indifferent, but we know better. At any rate, I have since moved onward, knowing that God let her see 3 generations of her descendants—all the way down to my siblings and me.
Thank you, Frederic. That's very touching...
I appreciate your willingness to share something like that, and I completely understand your keeping your grief hidden. With certain exceptions, I don't like to share such feelings very often either. When I received the news, I was shaken, and could have cried, but didn't. Somehow I couln't bring myself to do that in front of anyone. Had I been alone, it surely would have been a different story.
For her sake, I am glad. I know she's happy...very much so. But it doesn't take away the shock...
wow- these are such honest thoughts, Noelle. If I may offer one thing I've found, it's that nothing you feel is "wrong". there's no real right way to feel... I suspect the mixture of sadness and confusion and happiness you've been experiencing is very normal. when my grandmother died in '05 it was a car accident, so like with my Dad, it was completely unexpected, a total shock. but over the years I've sort of wondered if all death might be like it - no matter how much advance notice you have, it will always come as a shock.
*much love*
MK
Thanks, Mary-Kathryn. I really appreciated your comment and it really touched me. :-) I think it did me good to write out what I was feeling and not be the only one who knew about it. :-)
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