Receptions...

The night before I found out about my grandma's death I spent it with my new boyfriend Andy. Looking back at our relationship I feel pretty bad for him, because he really didn't know what he was getting himself in to. I latched on to him and convinced myself I loved him to dull the pain of my loss. In many regards I did love him, but not nearly as much as it seemed.

This was the exact opposite of the way I acted when I was with Aron and Sarah had committed suicide. I retracted. I wanted to be alone, in the dark away from anyone I didn't want to feel comfort, because she had none. I pushed Aron away, pushed him away for loving me. Then pushed him away for wanting me to forget her. I couldn't so, he had to go.

You can't control someone else's grief.

Andy and I were cuddling in my dorm room. I felt so comfortable, we were both of small stature and felt like children nestled up in the patchwork quilts with my teddy bear that a high school friend had given me dangling off the side of the narrow bed.

My phone rang. I went to get it as Andy rolled over on his side holding a pillow against him, keeping my spot warm. It was another update about my grandma only this one was a week overdue. Apparently she had been taken from her home... a senior trailer park community, hardly her home. Her home was the lovely pink house on the corner of Cedarwood with the billowing tree which carried the large white circular flowers, the rhubarb bushes and overly harvested pear trees. The house where my mother took a photo of me as a toddler from an ancient Easter where all the grandchildren hunted Easter eggs... not a trailer park community.

My mother informed me that she had been taken from this place and put in a retirement home. I was outraged. My grandma was barely 60 and had already been put into a home! She was an incredibly independent woman, never allowing anyone else to take care of her, always on her own. Where most woman would have bent over or wained for a man to comfort them, my grandma strict to her convictions held fast and alone making her own form of comfort, not needing anyone else to harbor her feelings or desires.

I was so angry, so petrified, so helpless. Why didn't they tell me? Why did they leave her a week out to tell me. I could have come home. I could have done something. I could have taken her!

My mother kept making it sound as if she didn't want me to come home.

"You wouldn't want to see her like this Jen," she said.

I don't care how she looks, this is my grandma. The woman who held me on her knee reading Dr. Seuss' Red Fish, Blue Fish. The woman who'd wake me up and make me giant Belgium waffles with strawberries and whip cream. The woman who never scolded me, but once and then I really had it coming. I was the child that even in my late teens would rush to her lap and lay my head on her knee to have her welcome it by stroking my hair. I loved this woman regardless of any disease or situation that had fallen on her.

My mother would later come to explain this as her not wanting me to see my grandma in such pain. She said the memories she held from the experience were ones she never wanted me to have. My grandma's mind was fading and with it her gentle temperament. She would be violent for no reason and forget things and they all knew it wasn't her but the cancer, but it still hurt to see the sounds of the devil springing from the voice of an angel.

I laid my body back down on the bed with Andy and sobbed into his chest until I fell asleep.

The next day I started to think about plans to visit my grandma as soon as school let out which was just a couple of weeks away.

I received another call.

My mother had bought me a ticket to come home to Bellingham, only it wasn't for a visit. She told me that grandma had died and that the funeral would be soon.

All I remember is slamming the phone and a horrible sickness rushing my body. I thought I was going to be sick. I ran to the bathroom holding my mouth. After a moment I got my bearings and walked sulking to my room. There I nestled myself in my bed in a ball and wept holding my pillow and teddy tightly.

I remembered a visit I had with my grandma around summer time last year where she walked through the entire house with me like a curator. She must have known things were going downhill because she started to point out each item of worth in her home. She said she didn't want us to be fooled by how much they could be sold for. The whole thing felt a bit warped to me and every time I'd tell her she'd just smile and proceed.

She looked fine to me, she had just visited me a couple of months prior in college during our Mother's weekend. Everyone thought that she was my mother and my mom was my sister. Not a hard one to mistake, age-wise I could see how most people would be correct. All of the boys on the floor above mine loved my grandma, because she had crocheted pot holders for all of them. She would often laugh about this saying, "I don't know why those boys were so in love with those pot holders." She had sent several more to my dorm room after she had left at the request of the boys who hadn't received one, do to lack of time and string.

Grandma walked all through out the house pointing out old crock pots and pickle jars, citing that the old crocks to make pickles were worth a lot and don't get fooled if someone says otherwise! She then went through some of the photos with me, the old photos ones from before she was born. Slowly going through our families history. It's now that I wish I had recorded this information in some form, I just never thought that she'd be gone.

I was envious of my cousins who had children even though they were my age. I wanted my children to have known her, felt her touch, been held by her if only once. Now I don't know if I want them at all and I know that this won't ever happen.

I've always pictured her as the ideal woman, the most beautiful woman based off of her kindness and soul. She would tell me that if someone came to her door asking for shelter regardless of his or her state that she would let them in, because it was the right thing to do. I often wonder if I'd ever be so trusting.