Life just continues delivering one loss after another, it seems.
It is how it feels, whether it is actually true or not is a matter of perception.
My gramma was 90 and living in a memory care facility for the last few months.
She had dementia and declined rather rapidly. My family is pretty certain she had dementia long before she was diagnosed or we knew of it.
My gramma was a lonely, bitter, self-absorbed woman (I’ve labeled her a narcissist).
She died the way she lived, alone and in the recesses of her own mind.
As a fellow human being that is my relative, I feel sad for how she lived and how she died.
Yet, I know it was her journey and she created it this way for herself.
On this point, I am DEEPLY GRATEFUL I have created a very different life today.
My whole family is one that simply brushes it under the carpet.
I realized today that I still have this desire (really an expectation) that they would be different than they are.
I sit in judgement for how they sit in judgement and talk about how everyone else should do things, when they do exactly the same thing.
Lo and behold, there is the mirror for me. I am sitting in judgement for how they deal or don’t deal with the death of a family member or anything else for that matter.
The truth here is it is NONE OF MY #%%&^* BUSINESS how they deal or don’t deal.
The trigger for me was my mom texted me that my gramma died.
This did not land well, even though I knew it was near the end of this life for gramma.
She’d been in a coma for a few days and hospice was there, so we knew it was happening.
Yet, I still had an expectation that I would receive a phone call about this.
Why would I think this? The whole communication about gramma was through email and text.
Why would this be any different?
I had an expectation that when someone crosses over, people call to deliver this news.
It’s what we did when my dad died. It’s what we did when my aunt died and she was in hospice too.
The whole thing is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than all the other deaths that have happened recently in my life and there have been many since the early 2000’s.
Grief is an interesting experience.
Every single time it is the same and it is different.
The way it hits me physically is surprising each time.
I knew when she was crossing, because I felt it in my own body.
Now, she’s dead and I feel the grief in my body too.
This time it is not so emotional in the fact that I didn’t really have a relationship with my gramma.
She’s blood, she’s my relative and she’s my gramma. This is what is factual about my relationship to her.
Given that she was so self-absorbed, grew up out of the depression and has her own story, I never really had any connection to her, except blood.
She did not know how to be in relationship and make connections, which she passed along to her children and so on and so forth.
Somewhere in my life I decided I wanted something different and I went and did something different.
I could see that how it was did not work for me, so I sought out other ways to learn how to be in relationships in a way that felt intimate and connected.
I am happy she is on to her next journey.
I am glad from one human to another, she is not suffering here anymore.
I am sad another family member is crossed.
I accepted a long time ago that I love my gramma because she is my gramma, even though, there was no real relationship to be had (by my definition of relationship).
Ultimately, there is a place of acceptance that we each have our own journey and we create our life how it is.
I have witnessed that people often die how they lived, sometimes they did how they want to.
This life is transient.
It goes very fast and we never know when.
Find ways every day to be grateful.
Love fiercely, openly and whole heartedly.
Tell people what they mean to you.
Tell them the difference they’ve made in your life.
MOST OF ALL….
HAVE NO REGRETS!!!!
Embrace every moment as if it is your last and you will be living fully present.
Marti (Hicks) Forrest
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