Bear With Me

Teddy Bear Beaded Pendant

One of the reasons that my posts have been pathetic over the last week is because my grandmother died. I didn't want to bring it up earlier because it felt like doing so would be begging for sympathy, and I don't really want sympathy. I don't even know what to do with it when people give it to me.

I'm also not very torn up about her death.  She's been on the road to dying for the last 16 years (well over half my life), and in that time she's managed to outlive any tender feeling we may once have had for her. It didn't help that she wasn't a very nice person to begin with and her dementia only made her more unpleasant and ornery to be around, to the extent that my mom thanked the people at the nursing home for working with her, and said that they were lucky Grandma had mellowed out by the time she was in assisted living--because she'd been quite mean in the dementia ward.

Which is totally an appropriate thing to say at your mother's deathbed memorial service.

Anyway, like I said, my grandmother outlived all our fond memories, and out vague shock at the idea that 'my grandmother is dying' and then she lived past the guilty feelings that kept us visiting her more the once a year, and set me to writing her letters once a week.  And then she just kept on living, until all that was left was a vaguely distasteful obligation to see her at major holidays--unless we could come up with a reason not to.

I guess I just I hope that as you (or I) age, you don't turn into an evil and ornery old person--and that even if you do your family still loves you and feels more than obligation when they see you. Because this cold 'at last' feeling is not something that anyone deserves.