Extinguished Existence

I came to a very sad realization the other day as I was updating my address book and that is that Wes's grandmother is really gone. You see what happend was Wes's cousin sent me an email with her new address and said they had moved. I opened up my nifty little Family Address spreadsheet and inserted her new address in the block with her name. When doing this I realized that Wes's Grandmother's address was just above hers. So I erased it. Then I thought, wow, just like that and she's gone. So weird. She is really gone. She no longer "exists" so to speak, well at least in an earthly world. She now exists among the angels and I believe is now probably playing scrabble with some friends among the clouds or baking some cookies for the others in heaven or maybe even playing cards with my grandparents because now that Wes and I are married they are friends. Oh yes I like that thought, my heart is smiling thinking of it.

You see it's hard to realize that she's really gone because we never saw her here. With the exception of our wedding, we only saw her in Pennsylvania,usually at her house, cooking, giggling, watching her grandkids and making sure that all of her family was together and happy and full. Man that woman loved to cook. She was a wonderful, wonderful, woman with a heart of gold and she surely is missed. I wish that we would have had more time with her, I wish that she could have seen our children, her great grandchildren, but I am happy to know that she did at least get to see one great grand child in her life time. I wish that life wasn't so fleeting here on earth. In a blink of an eye people that you love can be gone. Sometimes very unexpectedly. I am so happy that I wrote her all the notes that I did and that she sent me many recipes and updates on her weather and that she made good use of the slippers that we bought her for Christmas after shoveling her own walk. She loved those slippers. Such a simple thing and she was so grateful.

It makes me think of so many memories of my grandparents and how much I miss them and how I now cherish the time I had with them so much more. Oh how I wish that I would have sacrificed more nights out with my friends to just sit at my Grandparents house and watch baseball with my Grandpa or play cards with my Grandma with the big faced,numbered cards because she could hardly see them. I wish that I could go back to a time where life was innocent and care free and I had not a worry in the world and I was woken up by my Grandpa tickling my toes and the smell of bacon on a Sunday morning. I remember all the holidays at my grandparents house, Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, cooking feasts in the kitchen with my grandma, aunts, and mom, side by side, squabbling over who was making what and what time we should eat and who would even show up. I miss hearing my Grandfather laughing in the next room over all the women in the kitchen and how loud we were. I used to take my grandpa all the Christmas cookies that my grandma called "criminals" which meant they were just the least bit too brown, or the icing wasn't just right and my grandpa would get to eat those ones right then instead of waiting for the holiday to come! Oh those were the days. I remember hiding the Christmas cookies in the breeze way (the screened porch attached to their house) so that my uncles wouldn't find them and eat them all. In Pennsylvania in the winter time you can leave cookies just out in the breezeway because it stays so cold out there that the cookies stay frozen! After my grandparents passed away all of these traditions started to dwindle away as well and it makes me so sad to think of that loss of a central meeting place for our family. These are just a few things I remember about my Grandparents, I could go on for ages. But with those memories in tow, when meeting Wes's grandma, I knew that the traditions that she had in place had to be respected and that we must go to her house just like Wes did as a kid every Christmas. I am so happy looking back now that I was not one of those wives who drags their husband away from his family on holidays. I am so happy that last Christmas we were there, with all 20 some of us crammed into her small dining area, aunts and uncles smooshed at the kids table and me straddling a table leg at the end of the table and Wes's elbow poking his sister in the arm. It may not have been comfortable and the conversations may have been awkward, but looking back it is such a warm, warm memory that I will cherish for a lifetime. I hope that someday when my children have children and I am a grandparent that they love me as much as I loved Wes's grandmother and my grandparents. Then I will not care when my existence is extinguished for I will have shown them what love is.