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2008-08-27 - 3:16 p.m.
When we visited my grandmother on Monday she was not doing well...but she was still sitting up and able to carry on a conversation (albeit a short one). Yesterday when I went to see her she was barely conscious and managed to stay awake for about 30 seconds. I am not an expert, but I don't expect her to be alive at this time next week. She has maintained her humor and her beauty and my, I was lucky to have had her in my life. We were going through cupboards the other day, looking for wedding pictures and things like that. We found old dance cards from her years in high school and old college notebooks and letters from Austria and a diary from when she was in third grade. It is finding those things that makes it all so poignant. Our youth never quite disappears, and so death, even at an advanced age, must seem strange and unfair. She must remember vividly those dance cards being filled out by eager suitors just as I vividly remember the vertiginous pattering of my heart while waiting for Gary W. to ask me to dance at my first Homecoming dance. I find myself wondering what my own death will be like, I wonder which pictures and letters and items of clothing I'll be clinging to as I die. My grandmother tells me to go through her jewelry, her clothing, take whatever I want and when I go to her and ask her, "is this okay?" she says, "ohhh, maybe I'll hold onto that a little longer," and I just want to know what little stories are inlaid in those items. There isn't enough time. We should have started this process a long time ago. Anyway...I am home now and I have this nagging feeling I should be in my car, heading back to Kalamazoo. I am not calling my Dad until I get the house clean and my ducks in a row, because I think he's going to tell us that we should come back before Monday. In other news.... The deer are hanging out in the yard and it's only 3:30 in the afternoon. I think they pretty much just live here now. Like dogs. The deer are turning into dogs. |
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