A single tear rolled down my cheek. I blinked, wiping it quickly away with my hand flippantly, hoping nobody noticed.
The deepest empathy pouring out of my being in response to the heartache before me.
It felt good to feel again.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
My Wee Gran
I'm all outta grandparents. My parents are orphans, and I'm a granorphan.
Although she was 90 with worsening dementia I still find myself not believing. The reality of it all is far away over the ocean, across the Firth of Fourth.
Gran was a constant, a deep part of my confused identity, and although the gran I knew changed drastically over the years, her loss is a loss of my foundation, my roots and I find myself shaken and unsteady. Her love for me was unconditional, as grandparents' love tends to be. It did not matter, what I did, where I traveled and what or if I studied, she loved me for no reason other than because I was me.
I don't remember my dad's father, who died when I was very young, running around terrrorizing my closest friends and family in Peru. But Gran was always there, in Balingry with Silva, her little terrier. Memories of the comforting smell of coal fires, endless chocolate biscuits and mince and 'taties for supper spring to mind. I remember curling in front of her fire, the scratchy rug on my cheek and smoky smell tickling my nose. When we lived in Scotland, Sunday afternoons were spent driving to Fife from Edinburgh across the Fourth Road bridge, a sacred time of walks with Silva and eating more Kit-Kats and Caramel bars than mom approved of and Gran insisted on.
After we moved to Ecuador and then Canada, we went back at least every two years to visit, and then it became us going individually as we grew older. I remember a trip with Rhoda after I'd spent a summer in Peru and I took two massive books of photos to tell her all about it. She was then visibly aging and her memory declining. I wondered how much of it she would take in. But she went through the hundreds of photos, asking questions and repeating again and again. "We just don't know how the other half of them lives, do we?"
No matter where we lived, in the vast extent of my families globe-trotting, Gran was immovable, unchanging and obviously the central part of my Scottish identity. She seemed to shrink each time we saw her, and always hugged us fiercely, smiling widely when we came. Her eyes watering when we left. Its heartbreaking to leave bits of your heart in so many places, and Gran was where I left the Scottish chunk of my heart. She held it safely. Now my heart is missing that same chunk with her gone.
My last visit with her was in March of last year. She had been in a nursing home in Cardenden for several years and was different than I had ever seen her before. When the care-giver introduced me, her grand-daughter from Scotland, she beamed from ear to ear, re-arranging all her wrinkles. She touched my face, and said my Gaelic name like only a wee granny from Fife can. Then in clear dulcet tones, she started to sing, I couldn't follow the meaning of the words, and I have no idea if she actually knew who I was, but she sang to me and told me she loved me and I will take it as a gift.
So as my parents bid farewell to Gran and she returned to ashes on Friday morning in Scotland, late at night in Vancouver I cut babies out of taut bellies. Slimy, flailing and crying indignantly at the insults life brings, new grandparents were made that will love these grandbabies for no other reason than that. That they are their grandchild.
Goodbye Gran, I love you.
I don't remember my dad's father, who died when I was very young, running around terrrorizing my closest friends and family in Peru. But Gran was always there, in Balingry with Silva, her little terrier. Memories of the comforting smell of coal fires, endless chocolate biscuits and mince and 'taties for supper spring to mind. I remember curling in front of her fire, the scratchy rug on my cheek and smoky smell tickling my nose. When we lived in Scotland, Sunday afternoons were spent driving to Fife from Edinburgh across the Fourth Road bridge, a sacred time of walks with Silva and eating more Kit-Kats and Caramel bars than mom approved of and Gran insisted on.
After we moved to Ecuador and then Canada, we went back at least every two years to visit, and then it became us going individually as we grew older. I remember a trip with Rhoda after I'd spent a summer in Peru and I took two massive books of photos to tell her all about it. She was then visibly aging and her memory declining. I wondered how much of it she would take in. But she went through the hundreds of photos, asking questions and repeating again and again. "We just don't know how the other half of them lives, do we?"
No matter where we lived, in the vast extent of my families globe-trotting, Gran was immovable, unchanging and obviously the central part of my Scottish identity. She seemed to shrink each time we saw her, and always hugged us fiercely, smiling widely when we came. Her eyes watering when we left. Its heartbreaking to leave bits of your heart in so many places, and Gran was where I left the Scottish chunk of my heart. She held it safely. Now my heart is missing that same chunk with her gone.
My last visit with her was in March of last year. She had been in a nursing home in Cardenden for several years and was different than I had ever seen her before. When the care-giver introduced me, her grand-daughter from Scotland, she beamed from ear to ear, re-arranging all her wrinkles. She touched my face, and said my Gaelic name like only a wee granny from Fife can. Then in clear dulcet tones, she started to sing, I couldn't follow the meaning of the words, and I have no idea if she actually knew who I was, but she sang to me and told me she loved me and I will take it as a gift.
So as my parents bid farewell to Gran and she returned to ashes on Friday morning in Scotland, late at night in Vancouver I cut babies out of taut bellies. Slimy, flailing and crying indignantly at the insults life brings, new grandparents were made that will love these grandbabies for no other reason than that. That they are their grandchild.
Goodbye Gran, I love you.
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