Missing Grandma. Still.

Saturday marked three years since my grandma passed away. It was an odd day.

I remember the days leading up to the one-year mark; all I could think was that March 6, 2009 would be the first day that I wouldn't be able to look at the calendar and think, "This time last year, Grandma was still with us." I was absolutely terrified of that date. So on March 5th I was an emotional wreck. We were still in Germany, Jason was TDY to San Antonio, and I called my dad crying. I was such a mess that he thought that something had happened to Jason's plane.

My grief that first year was a terribly raw thing. I cried a lot. Some of that was the pregnancy--I was around eight weeks along with Izzy when she died--but most of it was just the grief. The pain was near overwhelming at times. Grandma was my one person; she never let me down. She understood me in a way that nobody else did. There were many similarities in our life paths. It was just difficult.

Over the course of that second year there was a gradual shift in the intensity of my grief. I still cried, but it would be prompted by something: a grandmother/granddaughter relationship portrayed on t.v., the sudden realization that I couldn't call her to tell her about something one of the boys did...even the death of Patrick Swayze. (Grandma's death was a result of pancreatic cancer.) That year I learned that the stages of grief are not a map; that the way to acceptance can sometimes be flooded with tears, causing you to temporarily lose your way again.

And now, here we are. It's been three years. Three years and a day, in fact. In a lot of ways, things are better. I don't cry as often. When I do cry, it isn't as long. Longer stretches of time pass between the impulses to call her over the minutiae of my life. I've stopped dwelling on the fact that I lived abroad for the last four and a half years of her life. I can once again be grateful for the time I did have with her instead of mourning what I missed.

The only thing is, I think someone left out a pretty important stage when discussing the grief process. Guilt. I did not spend all day Saturday crying in my bed and I feel badly for that. I feel as though I should have. I feel guilty for moving forward. And, as Jason told me, Grandma wouldn't want that for me. More than anything, Grandma was about life and living and loving and being where you were fully and completely--we all felt so loved and so spoiled by her because she knew how to do those things.

I hope that this is a short stage. In some ways the guilt is worse than the ever-present sadness of the first year. And man, I sure do wish Grandma was around to talk all this over with.

Day Nine: A Photo I Took

So remember way back in June when I started the "30 Days of Me" posts? Yeah, me neither really. June seems like it was 10 years ago! I really want to finish these, so I'm going to get back into them a little. I doubt I'll go straight through, but I'm determined to get it done. I've done days one through eight, so we'll start off with the ninth day, which is supposed to be a photo I took. Here's a round-up for those who are interested:

Day 01: Favorite Song

Day 02: Favorite Movie

Day 03: Favorite TV program

Day 04: Favorite Book

Day 05: Favorite Quote

Day 06: Writer's Choice

Day 07: Photo that Makes Me Happy

Day 08: Photo that Makes Me Angry/Sad

***

Taking photos is something that I love to do; it is one of the many reasons you will rarely see me in our family pictures. Unfortunately, my camera is just a point-and-shoot. I do my best, but my pictures are never going to be quite as clear and lovely as those who have the yummy DSLR cameras. Maybe someday, right? In the meantime, I'll just keep snapping away!

Since the majority of my latest pictures are from things I want to blog about, I'm going to dig into the archives a little. This picture is from the family reunion we went to in Indiana. It had been years and years since I had been able to attend the annual reunion. In fact, I think it was the biggest family gathering we managed to have ever. There were a few cousins missing, but that was it. I'm happy that it worked out that way because it made Grandma so happy to have so many of us there together.

As people are wont to do at family gatherings, we did a bunch of posed pictures that day. Grandma wanted pictures of each of her kids (five total) with all of their individual families, so we had a big, old photo session. It was nuts! People gathered up on stairs and in front of trees, various adults called for children to "Look at me! Look here! Smile!", silly children made faces and giggled when the exasperated adults would snap the photo at just the wrong time; it was spectacular. The whole time all this was going on, Grandma and Grandpa sat up on the big, screened-in porch and watched. From time to time one of them would point out a particularly funny scene to the other and they would smile or laugh. Together.

Together. It's how I always think of them. Grandma was gone eight months after that family reunion. I'm so glad she got that day. It meant so much to her.

I took this picture when my aunt, cousin, and I were up on the porch taking pictures of Grandma and Grandpa. It is one of my favorite pictures from the day. This is what 60 years of marriage should look like.

Day One: Favorite Song

I am not a person who generally has a "favorite." I don't have a favorite color or city or much of anything else. I don't mean to be difficult when faced with this question, but I always have to ask, "Favorite for what?" I may like to decorate my house using burgundy and green...but I wouldn't want to paint the outside of my house either one of those colors. I like Heidelberg here in Germany, but I like Cincinnati in Ohio and Gatlinburg in Tennessee. I like all the things I like for different reasons and I can't really pick one thing over the other and say that this, here, is my very favorite.

As you might guess, this is going to make some of these "30 Days of Me" posts a bit of work for me.

I love music. Love.It. I tend to go for music that is slow and wistful sounding (think Sting's Fields of Gold). I like music from the 60s through the 70s best...mostly. I like James Taylor, the Eagles, and Christopher Cross. Music from the 80s is fun too, though. Jason and I have a lot of private jokes concerning the soundtrack to Footloose. Great car music is Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani, and The Black-Eyed Peas. They're just fun to "sing" along with when I'm driving the kids around. ("Sing" because I am profoundly tone deaf. Just so you know: you never, ever want to hear me "sing." That old saying, "Just because I can't sing doesn't mean I won't."? Yeah, I own that sentiment.)

I will, however, go through stages where one song will touch me more than any other. And I do have one song that speaks to me in the place where I am right now. That song is Miranda Lambert's "House that Built Me." In particular, these lyrics really get to me:

You leave home and you move on and do the best you can,
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am,

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it,
This brokenness inside of me might start healing,
Out here it's like I'm someone else,
I thought maybe I could find myself,
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave,
Won't take nothin but a memory,
From the house that built me.

Some of this probably stems from the general feeling of disconnect that I have been feeling with my extended family, particularly on my dad's side. My grandma was always the one who kept me anchored to home; she kept me updated on everyone and passed on the happenings from this end to everyone else. ("Home" to me has always been Grandma & Grandpa's house. I came home to that house from the hospital at birth and that house was the only constant home I knew growing up as a military brat. It's the closest thing I've ever had.) I talked to her a lot. She kept me grounded in terms of parenting issues as well. She had five kids and a husband who wasn't home much (my grandpa was a firefighter) so she understood the stress in a way that others in the family can't. Since her death I have been a little adrift.

I have spent a lot of the last couple of years figuring out how to heal and I feel like it would be easier to do around my family. As disconnected as I feel when I am out here in my own life, when I am home I mostly feel as though I belong. I think this song speaks to me right now because I was really thinking that the possibility of going to St. Louis would be my shot at getting back to that centered feeling I get around my family. My last shot at claiming my place just by virtue of being so much closer to home. The fact that it isn't going to happen has been something of a slap in the face.

I do think that music is a healing force in and of itself. The fact that someone wrote these lyrics (and that the song is so popular) lets me know that I am not the only one out here feeling this way. I just have to have faith that I will be able to work my way through all this in my own way.

What songs have touched you during stressful times in your life? Do you often find yourself identifying with a song because of what is going on around you?

Missing Grandma

Today is not my favorite day of the year. It is one of the more difficult ones. Two years ago today, surrounded by the love of her family, my grandma passed away.

Passed away. I can't believe that it's still so hard to say, write, and think that.

I'm not good with the time lines because my family, God love them, tried to keep the truth hidden for awhile. They hemmed and hawed about what may or may not have been wrong with her. In their defense, it was done at her request. That's probably the only thing that kept me from being angry when I found out that she had cancer.

Cancer. Another hard thing to say or write. You would think that you would get used to that word but I haven't yet. It's such an ugly, nasty word. I hate it.

Grandma fought a good fight for a long time. I think that it was around 18 months from the time that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She'd been sick for awhile at that point, though. The odds were very against her and the length of her fight alone shows just how determined she was to squeeze every last drop of lemonade out of the lemon she was given. Pancreatic cancer is one of those especially bad sorts. Not that there is a "good" sort of cancer, of course.

That shit is all evil.

The grief that I have felt for the past two years has been a journey. Jason lost his father in 2000, so I knew that feelings would surface in their own time. You hear a lot about the stages of grief and when I was on the outside of Jason's grief looking in, I thought of those stages as a type of map. Stay straight at Denial. Turn left at Anger. You can take the Bargaining Bypass or just go straight to Depression. Keep going straight until you hit Acceptance. I figured that it was something that would get easier with time. I thought it was a journey with a final destination point. I guess I thought that it would eventually end.

I didn't know about the waves. I didn't know about the whirlpools. I didn't understand the depths of the pain involved. I just plain didn't know.

Now I know that the stages of grief are more like a lighthouse. They guide you in, but you can't follow them directly. Sometimes a wave comes and knocks you down. Sometimes you find yourself getting dragged out to sea a little. Sometimes you find that you're closer to shore than you had thought. And, of course, a lighthouse isn't a destination. It's a place that gives you a bearing to safe harbor, but you never really "arrive" at the lighthouse.

Does that mean I don't think that you arrive at acceptance? No. But some days the water in your harbor is a little deeper than others. Sometimes it just hurts a little more.