Grey

Thoughts

So my grandmother apparently only has days left. Isn't that exciting?

It's weird. I'm not as sad as I guess I should be. The couple of people I've told are all 'aww are you okay?'.
And yeah I am.

Okay, yes by blood she is my grandmother, but it was my maternal grandmother that meant so much to me, and she's already gone. So I don't feel like I'm really losing anyone.
I miss my Nanna so much. Whenever anything is bothering me I wish to anyone above to have her back just to hold me, knowing that she may not understand or be able to help, but was there anyway.
I know she would have loved Carly and I'm forever sad she wasn't here to meet her.

To me the news about Grandma is somewhat of a relief; she won't be in pain anymore, and until she goes they're keeping her comfortable.

That said, the last time I saw her I curled up on the bed beside her and talked and it was nice and I remember thinking that it may be my last conversation with her. So I enjoyed our time together and kinda made my own closure if thats the right word to use.

As I pulled in I thought I really should have brought her something. I looked around my car and took the charity pin of a horse from my visor and took it to her. A real well-thought gift huh?

But she loved it. I knew she would.
My eyes and my love for animals came from her.

I remember looking around her room and seeing the big old BW photo of her framed on the wall. She was a young woman then and kinda pretty. Around it, stuck in the frame were smaller pictures. All of them were more BW shots of her at various ages. Except one. A small colour picture of me poked out of the corner of the frame and it made me tear a tiny bit before looking away.

It's not her fault she didn't know how to show us love like my Nanna did. She chased her own son down the street with an axe when my he was younger, so maybe as kids we expected too much from her. Nonetheless it meant that as we got older she just became 'Dad's mother' to us, though she was still "Grandma" in name.

Everytime we visited her, conversation would almost always eventually drift to her neighbours and how she was convinced they were doing this or that and conspiring against her. She was nuts that way. Accusing everyone in her flatblock of all sorts of things. Convinced that everytime she went outside that they were pressed at their windows watching her.
Haha and who knows? Maybe they were; they were just other lonely and crazy old people too after all.

The sad thing though is I guess I'll find out more about her when she's gone than I ever did before.

I could tell you the history of my mother's side several generations back. But other than knowing that I have a gay uncle and an aunt somewhere in Victoria, I know practically nothing of that side of my family.
They don't talk about anything too far beneath the skin. Out of Grandma and himself, Dad is probably the more expressive with his feelings, but not by much - those who've met him, you'll know that that's pretty non-existent.

So I'm pretty much expecting her to be gone when I get back, and I'll help Mum finish sorting through the rest of her stuff that she's saved for my return because there's things I want to keep. Like her collection of old kitty statues I used to love staring in through the glass at when I was little, or the clock with the birds on it that we gave her because it reminded us of her and knew she'd like it. And the pin from my visor that day that made her so happy despite its lameness or lack of thought as a gift.

And once home, I guess I'll raise my glass to her and say 'I don't know if she loved me or not, and yeah she was kinda mean and grumpy and paranoid about the people around her, but she was my Grandma and I loved her anyway'.

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