Grandparents

I follow this blog. It’s written by a girl who has the same disease as the daughters of the women who write these blogs. She’s a pretty cool kid. Just started college. Anyway, her last post was about her grandfather who had just passed away. She was saying how she avoided writing about him while he was ill because she didn’t want to admit he was dying, and that she dreamed he’d be at her wedding and get to see her kids.

I almost lost it, guys. I told you before (link) about my grandparents all passing away really quickly. I only had one blood grandparent still living with Mr. T and I got married - my dad’s dad. And he and my adopted grandfather (Mama N’s dad) were both so frail we were scared to risk the hour drive and spending all day out in the heat at our outdoor wedding.

So there were no grandparents at my wedding. Just six months previously I had had three living grandparents, two of which had no signs of leaving us any time soon and the other two were significantly healthier than they were by the time the wedding rolled around. And it makes me really sad to think about.

I think about my mom’s parents a lot, actually. I miss them more than I miss my dad’s. That felt mean to say, but hear me out. My dad’s parents both lived into their 90s. They both got very ill prior to passing away. We knew they were going to pass soon, and we prepared ourselves. The same thing happened with Mr. T’s grandfather. When someone is that ill it’s painful to see them hang on. I’m so thankful I was raised to believe in God - I don’t see how anyone who doesn’t have that faith can cope when a loved one passes. Because I know that one day I will see my grandparents, and Mr. T’s grandfather, again one day. And that makes it okay.

Mom’s parents passed away so suddenly. They were healthy. Well, as healthy as people in their 70s can be. They had a garden, they lived on the river and went fishing almost daily, they were so young. They died in a car crash the day after Valentine’s Day - almost six months to the day of my wedding day. When my aunt saw me at the funeral home she hugged me and said how upset they’d be to know they wouldn’t be at my wedding. They never got to meet my niece. My sister wasn’t even pregnant yet, actually. She didn’t get pregnant until at least May, because I was living with them when they found out.

Anyway. I don’t know where I was going with that, other than I got sad and wanted to write to release it. My ability to ramble usually makes me get off-topic and less depressed. Yay, short attention spans! Also, it reminded me of when my cousin told me she was GLAD our grandparents were dead, because she had found pictures of me on FB that she found offensive. And then proceeded to call my mom and LEAVE HER A VOICEMAIL telling here there were NUDE images of me on the Internet. Oh goodness... Not a fan of all my family members - let me tell you.

I had taken down my posts that told that whole story after my dear cousin (I had some clever acronym for her, didn’t I?) found my blog. Thank you, Sister Dear! :P But I’ve never felt right about it. I called her some bad names (cunt being one of them), which was a bit low, but she accused me of being hypocritical for calling her gossipy then posting the whole thing for all my friends to see. But I wasn’t being gossipy! I was copy/pasting our exact conversation into a blog, then calling my cousin a cunt. So I feel like I let the terrorists win that one. I’m going to put those posts back up. I’m not going to link to them. But I’ll republish them.