Grandparents

The following is a post that was floating around in my head before I had a blog. One of the post that prompted me to take the plunge to blogging. A recent post by a good friend and blogger about the passing of her grandmother brought it to the fore front of my brain again.

About several months ago I was trying to get Melissa to help me with the dishes and I said "Many hands make lite work." I paused as I realized that was something my grandma always use to say. I turn around and looked at the title on my stove that says 'Beth'. My grandmother is my name sake and it was hers. I realized that I was missing my grandma. But then I also realized that I wasn't missing her as she was when she died. I was missing the grandmother of my youth. The grandma who was fierce, independent, and didn't take no guff from no one. Who loved deeply and could make anything bloom. The grandma who loved to cook and always had something good to eat.

My grandma lingered to life for several months. Unfortunately it became a point of contention among family members. There were those that wanted her to live for as long as possible no matter what and those who like me didn't want to remember her last moments as a fraction of the woman that she was. I didn't care to see her much in her last few days, although perhaps I should have. The memory that I like to keep of her as my 'last' memory is not the last time I saw her alive; it is before she went home on hospice care. She was in a transition home, she was awake alert and happy. Her sister was there and they were talking laughing and remembering soda water. That was the grandma I wanted to remember.

Missing my grandma made me miss my grandpa. They were inseparable in life and in death. This of course lead to thinking of my other grandfather. Though he lives part of me mourns the grandpa of my youth. The one that went camping with us and took us for rides in the '52 truck where we sometimes got to shift the gears for him. I lamented the fact that my husband and my children will never know my grandparents the way that I did. And I realized that there are grandparents that I never got to know in this life. Their spirits live in the stories that are told and retold from the memories of loved ones.

How grateful I am to know and understand that these people are not gone. And that I and my children will one day meet and love not just the grandparents of my youth, but my grandparents in their youth. I once talked with a co-worker who honestly believed that death was the end. It shocked me more that I thought it would have. All but a few of my close friends at the time didn't share my religious beliefs and I have always enjoyed sharing differing views. But deep down I think I believed that everyone believed in some kind of life after this one. Maybe I have always taken that knowledge for granted. It brings me so much peace and perspective.