Saying Goodbye

Posted by kay on March 11, 2010 5:59 am in other | 20 comments

Grandma, Mom and I, May 2007 (Grandma was then 97)

As some of you may already know, my grand-mother passed away a week ago.

(click the picture to see it bigger)

I couldn’t go to the funeral, but I at least got to “see her” at the funerary home on Sunday, where I spent the day with my family. It was an incredibly emotional weekend, since the way home is a 7 hours bus ride, which means that in the space of 48 hours, we spent 14 on the bus and 10 at the funerary home. We also got to eat with my best friend and her boyfriend, who were also grieving since a friend of theirs – who I knew to a certain extent – passed away the same week (29 years old, cancer, and he had a 1 year old son.) So you can imagine in which kind of mood I’ve been lately.

I’m not one to usually talk extensively about my problems on the internet – except the usual whining over university – but my grand-mother’s death hit me pretty hard. Granted, she was 100 years old, and she had had a good, long life filled with love. Still, for the last 10 years, we’ve been told by doctors to expect her death so many times (at least twice a year), that we didn’t believe it anymore. I mean, of course we knew she wasn’t eternal, but after all she survived those 10 years (a few strokes, pneumonia, a broken hip, all those things old people die from, and that’s only the things I know the name of) we wouldn’t think it would happen like this, quietly, in her sleep (although she had been pretty sick the day before).

I talked a lot about why she was amazing on her birthday in August, and I miss her deeply. Because I live so far from home, I only got to see her a few times a year, which has never been enough. I really wished I would have had the time to see her one more time – but isn’t it always the case?

The day at the funerary home was one of the weirdest day I have ever experienced. It felt more like a huge family reunion than anything else. Since we have – had – 5 generations in the family (some of my cousins are grand-parents), there were a lot of people I hadn’t seen for years. Plus, there was the fact that my grand-mother didn’t look like herself at all. Now, I know the dead always look really different, but I have never seen one look this different. Had I not know what I was doing there, I would never have recognized her.

I miss her a lot. The reality of it didn’t hit me until I was on the bus back home on Sunday evening. Seeing my fake-grandma in her coffin, as I called her, really made me realize I wouldn’t see her again. Ever. I am terribly sad – and at the same time, relieved for her. She had a very lucid mind trapped in an old body, almost unable to do anything by herself. She had been praying God to take her for so long…

I am very sorry for this depressing post, but writing it helped a little. Fighting grief or sadness is never easy, and for me it translates into insomnia. So I thought I would honor her memory by writing this as hours of the night are ticking away.

Thank you for reading

(and now it’s back to the regular program : books!)