Today I woke up with this thought and it followed me to the shower and to the car and to Wright State. This is the first time this thought ever occurred to me.
My children will never know my grandparents.
I got a phone call last night from my Dad. Grandpa is dying. They don’t expect him to make it through the week. Dad and Mom are flying out tonight. Matt and I will be going to get their car from the airport and sending them onto the plane with hugs this evening. As one who processes the extent of loss after the fact, I don’t expect to cry any time soon. It’s not that my grandpa doesn’t mean something to me, but it’s that focusing on the facts is always my default in coping.
But the thoughts this morning brought up this new realm of reality. My children will never know my grandparents. And Matt may never know them either.
You know, a lot of people are blessed with supportive, loving families. They have big family reunions and the grandchildren get the opportunity to see their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and even great grandparents.
I remember my great grandma Ruth briefly. Really once my memory kicked in great grandma Ruth was not doing so well health-wise. But Grandma would take us up to see her quite frequently. Jes and I would play with the few toys that great grandma had as grandma would take care of her mom. Great grandma Ruth didn’t say much, as a result of a stroke. But we loved her because grandma loved her and grandma took the time to take care of her. (You know how kids are, they love people and things because important people in their lives love people or things.) One day we stopped visiting great grandma. And that was all I knew. I received a tea cup and saucer in the mail sometime afterward. Great grandma had left it for us. The orange set have traveled with me to UT and WSU and now reside in the China Nook. And the doll that great grandma made for me took on new meaning.
Grandparents are wonderful, especially mine. I could shower you readers with stories of working in the woodshop with Grandpa as he made wood come alive and I will never forget asking him to make me a rubber duck from wood before I left for Ohio. He kept telling me that he could make me a wood duck, but I told him I wanted a rubber duck of wood. (Stupid kid!) Or there’s the “Little House on the Prairie” that would welcome us to grandma time. Jes and I would watch… grandma would sometimes nap.
And I wish I could tell you of stories with my Mom’s parents, but they were never grandma and grandpa to me. Mom’s dad died many years ago and Mom’s mom never really enjoyed my family’s company. So it’s just weird to think that here shortly I will no longer have grandparents. At all.
No one so close to me has died yet and it’s quite foreign to think about.
It’s becoming more hard to think about as it sits with me…
