Random thoughts about Grandparents and this life and its endings: My Johnny K's cousins talk so often and so highly of their Italian grandmother that I have a living breathing sense of her in my head. Pretty amazing for she has been gone a long time. I have been thinking about my grandmothers and how I have sparkles of both of them within me. As I write this I picture them hovering, and nudging each other happily in a way they never would have actually done here on earth. I read somewhere that the reason we grieve when people die is because they exist still in a place we cannot reach. That if we were not grieving so, we would be able to reach it better. That if they were truly "gone" we would not feel the grief so. This comforted me. I do not think we lose people and I do not think they "rest in peace." I think they exit this movie theater and find themselves "home" and exclaim "Wow...That was something else!" Hopefully they appreciate what went on when they were here no matter what happened or how it ended. They have a chance to soak in what they gained from the experience. I believe they can still see us. When my Little Gran died I dreamt that my mother and I were standing face to face talking, and my Little Gran was right there listening. Gran was in a "Glinda the good witch travel bubble" just to my right, but if we turned to "see" her she was just out of our earthly sight. This comforted me. My grandparents greeted you first today, in the above photo. This was before my mother was born and decades before I came along and then more decades before my Little Gran died and appeared in my dream. We had decades of time to play with her. "It is into us that the lives of grandparents have gone." ~Charles and Ann Morse Isn't that lovely. Meanwhile, we are here. And sometimes we claim that it is good. Sometimes we claim that things are sad and bad and we are mad. We are all over the place with what we claim about it. However if we thought it was going to end next week for us, what would we claim? We would love it! We would eat and dance and drink it all in and be on the phone making spontaneous plans and get out to the mountains and the ocean and the woods and surround ourselves with connecting with friends and family we love most. We would talk to strangers and knock on our neighbors door to say how much we appreciated them. We would feel the rain and the heat and the snow and admire the birds and the flowers and have so much admiration for children and how wisely they embrace play. We would LIVE BIG for the week. When really, every day we can LIVE BIG. Do you need a death sentence to do it? So come dance with me and listen to music and hug way more people and have that dessert and make the very best of it. Reach. Stretch. Appreciate. Love. Permission to choose a new path if the one you are on is not doing it for you. Live as if you would be gone next week. They say everything at the root is love or fear based. What is at the root of you? My grandmother, Elizabeth Stewart Gilchrist and her brother Arthur Bruce, approx 1910
2 Comments
Arlyne
7/28/2017 08:50:03 pm
My grandparents were such a big part of our growing up. My mothers parents were both Swedish. My dads dad was German and mother Hungarian. Nani was always in the kitchen making something. Our favorite was sauerbraten and spatula and her paper thin apple strudel. They all came over from Europe in the early 1900's and went thru Ellis Island. My moms twin brothers wife just died two weeks ago and she was the last of her generation.
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Melissa
7/28/2017 09:10:17 pm
That is very moving to know the last of that generation has moved on. Love knowing a little about your grandparents ❤️
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