And, yeah. Most convoluted sentence EVAR, I know. But I was thinking, specifically, about two deaths in my family (names withheld to protect the innocent.)
The first death was actually my grandmother, and it's been...well, it feels fairly recent, actually, but the truth is, it was nearly two years ago now. Because it happened in January while my DH was still deployed in Iraq, and he's been home for a year now. So. The thing about her is that now, I only have one grandparent left, and that absolutely kills me. I was lucky enough to have a very wonderful, loving family, all of it -- my parents loved their in-laws, their in-laws loved them... Heck, my two sets of grandparents even invited each other for extended family reunions and get-togethers and they had never met before my parents got together. THAT is how open and loving and wonderful they all were. My father's father died, and my mother's parents were RightThere helping and supporting and cooking and being wonderful. And the reverse -- someone in my mother's family died (not even a close relative) and my father's aunts and uncles descended en masse on my mother's family to help them mourn and say goodbye, some of them travelling from Delaware to Tennessee to be there for a funeral of someone they'd never met.
Sometimes, my little internet communities feel like this -- someone suffers a loss or disappointment and people they don't even know are coming out of the woodwork to offer sympathy or support because they have a mutual friend somewhere along the line.
And I always thought that my family was so awesome and strong and amazing to be like that, but I've kind of learned differently this year.
See, on my father's side, his grandparents had 8 kids. Of those 8, 6 married, and three reproduced. One wanted to, but was, for whatever reason, unable, so they adopted a son. This son grew up feeling just as loved, just as much a part of the family as the biological cousins of his generation. The entire family was there giving their support when he married and had children of his own, and he was just the guy, you know? The one who just always showed up when he was needed. The one who would sit with you while you were in the hospital so whoever else had been there could go home and change, or go to the cafeteria and eat. The guy who pulled a paralysingly shy teenage girl out of herself at Christmas one year, talking about E.A. Poe, who she'd been studying in a HS lit class that year, and when he found out how much she'd loved reading his work, had snuck home to giftwrap his own Complete Works for her for a Christmas present.
I didn't even realize he was adopted until -- actually, it may have been that same year.
And then this year, he died. It was tragic. He was only a few years older than my own husband, he left behind a wife, a son in college, and a just-barely-teenage daughter. To say nothing of his devastated parents, his cousins... But sadly, his death has caused a rift in the family. His father was the only son of those amazing great-grandparents of mine. And when my great-grandmother died intestate, he bought the family home and property at auction, planning to leave it to his wonderful, loving, beloved son. Now that son is dead, he wants to leave it to his grandchildren. Sadly, some of his sisters have now decided to be ugly about that -- despite the fact that none of them are in any shape to buy the property, or will themselves be dead by the time it changes hands, or have no heirs of their own, they don't want it to go to anyone who doesn't share their blood. Apparently, nearly 50 years of love don't make a family, after all. I really want that property left to those kids because to me, the only difference between their blood and mine is that if someday one of my kids needs a transplant, they may not be able to provide what is needed (although I have no doubt that they would be the first in line volunteering for a test.) DNA doesn't even come into it. And I have NO IDEA how hurt they must be right now, still grieving their father and knowing that these people they've loved for years and thought of as family, extra grandmas, don't feel exactly the same way about them.
So, much as I love my older relatives, I am wary of them. I am mentally trying to write it off as some sort of weird manifestation of senility (they are all well into their 70s and 80s by now) and telling myself that if they were younger, in possession of their right minds, this would not be happening. And part of my is just so glad that I don't live nearby anymore, and don't have to see them often or hear what's going on. And I'm so, so sad for the world's loss.
"No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." --John Donne So anyway... the guilt part (this is what I was actually setting out to write, I just got distracted by back-story.) I am feeling very guilty because part of me feels that I haven't really mourned for my grandmother. It's been two years, and I've cried nary a tear for her. And yet... Every moment of every day, my heart aches for her, just as it does for my other grandmother, who died while I was pregnant with my oldest child, just as it does for other dearly loved members of my family who died even before I reached my teens. And I've mourned her, I really have. The thing is...I mourned her death years before it happened. She started suffering small strokes when I was a freshman in college. Eventually they got big enough that she couldn't care for herself, and the family (my parents and my father's brother) made the heart-breaking decision to put her in a nursing home very close to the same time my daughter was born. My sons never knew her outside of the nursing home, and she spent nearly ten years there, dying by inches. It was more obvious to me, as by that time I had a home and a family of my own, and wasn't visiting weekly the way my parents and siblings were; I was lucky to see her twice a year. And so I've been mourning her death for the entire lives of both my boys. By the time her body stopped, I had cried my tears.   |
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