Waves of Grief
Grief. It hits you out of nowhere. Like when you’re cleaning out the mail bin that’s way overdue.
We lost my grandma Barb just before New Year’s Day. And in all the chaos of the new year, getting boys back in routine, and then getting walloped with sickness… most of the waves of grief have been kept at bay.
But then i see this. A letter from her to my boys. Thanking them for the paintings and flower pot they made her. She was always so good at writing a thank you letter or a birthday card. I always knew it was her because of the cursive. People don’t use cursive like that anymore. I’ll miss her letters. In this letter, she told the boys the pictures were being hung on the cabinets. I love that she had all of the great grand kids paintings & drawings hung up in her apartment. And she had all our pictures of our families on the fridge.
My grandma was a tough cookie sometimes ( a lot of times). But she was still my grandma & we loved her a whole heck of a lot. She was an only child so I’m sure having the sized family she did in all of us was both a beautiful gift and a bit overwhelming at times. You should have seen Christmas when we were all kids…woof bless her heart for hosting that year in and year out. Crazy fun loud gatherings. A loud rambunctious life of the party husband and then in an instant… he was gone & she began to live on her own & I’m sure the world got eerily quiet. Sure she still had all of us. But i can only imagine what that was like for her. She spent 30 years living without him. But always keeping his memory alive in stories i enjoyed listening to.
My favorite story I used to ask her about was her time in California! After graduation, she and a few girlfriends moved out there from the Midwest to teach (and meet sailors stationed out there). I could not believe she would pack up and move out there in her 20s! It still amazes me to this day.
This whole getting older thing and losing those who share our DNA, our family roots, who held the legacy stories- it’s just the hard and terrible stuff.
Grief, it’s just going to keep coming in waves till heaven, isn’t it?
