My grandmother died a short time ago. It wasn’t unexpected but it happened a little bit faster than I had anticipated. And now I am sitting at the computer, trying to process it all. I don’t think that it has sunk in yet, not completely.
The call came a few minutes after midnight, I didn’t have to look at the caller ID to know that it was bad news, what else do you hear about late at night or early in the morning. Twenty years ago if the phone rang then it would have been a girl friend or friend with benefits. Twenty years ago it might have been one of the boys looking for a ride home or a shoulder to cry on.
Those days are gone and I have come to dread those late night calls because they almost always mean that someone is gone.
My grandmother is gone. The woman who used to take my sisters and I on long walks is here no longer. The woman who had more energy than anyone I ever met has finally run out and the world is a sadder place for it.
Across town my mother, aunt and a sister are sitting with my grandfather, who after 75 years of marriage is now a widower. My heart breaks for him more than anyone.
They met when they were 11 and spent the next 85 years together, a lifetime. It is not a tragic loss, she lived a long and full life. But my grandfather’s world just collapsed into a million pieces. And there is nothing that I can offer to fix that other than soft words of encouragement.
And will I offer those. I will do all that I can to help. Every thought, idea, trick I can come up with will be his, but I know that in the end it will fall short and for that I am sorry.
Sometimes words are simply inadequate or perhaps the shortcoming lie in the person who wishes to be wordsmith. At the moment I don’t know what to say or rather I don’t like what I am saying so I keep deleting and rewriting.
It is not my way, at least not on the blog. Here in my corner of cyberspace the words flow like water down a rocky stream. Here is where I would give you a better description of the woman my grandmother was and why she was so deserving of our love.
But the words fail me. I cannot translate that which I see in my head to paper. So in a few moments I will shut down the computer. In the morning I will resume my role as father and I will have to tell my children that grandma has gone. I need some time to think about what I want to say so for now this will be it.
I’ll share more thoughts and ideas about grandma later, for now let me say that I loved her very much and I will miss her more. We aren’t given that many grandmothers and now I have none. The world is indeed a darker place.
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