I lost my Granny 3 years ago in February. I had her for 36 years. I was so happy that she was able to meet and KNOW my daughter, her namesake. She died 6 months after I had to put her in a nursing home. A decision that ripped my heart out and left me bleeding.
She was losing her mind, disease taking away her memories and me.
I was fortunate enough to have spent several weeks with her while we were getting her situated.
I remember sitting on the front porch of her house watching the sun rise and set. Watching deer come from the woods and the cars go up and down the mountain. In between those moments, I was packing up her house. Cleaning and painting nicotine walls. Letting go of my childhood.
We had to sell her house, the house that was the one constant in my life. I grew up there. When my parents divorced, I spent the summer and every other Christmas there. My father's alcoholism decreed that.
So, the walls held so many memories. The summer that my sister and I watched Grease 2 and Six Pack everytime they came on HBO. Watching Lawrence Welk and eating potato chips with my Papa. The discovery of eating banana's with peanut butter on them. The basement that held toys and her ironing board, since she ironed EVERYTHING!! Christmas lights strung around the basement because my Dad loved Christmas and from when they had parties. The picture in the kitchen that we laughed at because she bought it thinking it was a thanksgiving picture, but it was a picture of an Amish family. The table that we ate dinner at every night at 4:30. The front porch that we sat on everynight after dinner watching lightning bugs and the cars going up and down the hill. The brown label on the door to the garage that said Jeff's pad.
She watched her baby, my dad, be sent to Vietnam and come back a different man. She held my hand in the snow while we listened to them play taps when we buried him when I was 22 after he died on Christmas Eve.
I was home when the call came from my aunt. Come home to Ohio. I spoke with Granny and told her that I would see her on Friday, and for the first time in a long time she told me-- Chris, I will see you then. When she called me Chris, she was talking about ME. Her and my Dad were the only two people on this planet that called me Chris. If she said Christie, I knew she was going by what she heard others say. So, it was beyond URGENT that I get to her. That was the last conversation I had with her that she knew ME. I never got to tell her, that she understood....how much I truly loved her and that I was so thankful that she loved me, when she didn't have too. And, I KNEW that she loved me. No doubt there.
By the time I got home, it was almost time. Hospice. It means one thing. Goodbye time.
My sister and I were sitting with her in the hospice room. I was sitting in the chair next to her bed holding her hand and watching the snow fall--listening to Coldplay's Yellow. Lauren sat on her other side holding her hand. It was quiet. Granny was out of it, she hadn't spoken since we got there. Lauren got up to say goodbye, since we were leaving for the night. It was around 10:15. Lauren went to sit down and I stood on Granny's right side. I took her hand and told her that I loved her. She turned her head and looked at me, and I knew. That moment that just lets you know. No words were needed. Her eyes just stared into mine. I told her that it was ok to go and that my Daddy, her baby, was waiting for her. To go with Daddy. She turned her eyes to the left of me and looked at the open space there, and I watched her crystal blue eyes lose their life.
It was truly one of the most PROFOUND moments of my life. Death is as beautiful as birth. I was blessed to be able to see that. I was grateful that she let us. She always tried to protect us, telling us things AFTER the fact, which drove us crazy.
Again, I stood in the snow to bury someone I cherished and loved.
I am going back in the next weeks to get the last remaining things from her house, that have been stored at her sisters house.
For the first time in my 39 years, I cannot go back to her house, my house. I realized it the other day and I have had a pain in my heart ever since.
Letting go, all over again.
It's days like these, that the simple days of summer and childhood are so far away. The time in your life when the world makes perfect sense and letting go means nothing more than closing the door behind you....
This visit, I get to visit Daddy's grave, Papa's grave and Granny's grave.......letting go in stone.
