My Grandmother
18 Dec
Last year, my grandmother died. I hadn’t seen her in nearly five years, hadn’t spoken to her in two. She’s slowly cut herself off from her daughter and by proxy her granddaughters.
When the holiday season rolled past, I ignored the urge I had to send my grandmother a card. I figured that I had until next year, when I’d be more settled in. I’d be able to take pictures of Cory (my sister) and her daughter and send them off, as well. Maybe pictures of all of us together, even. I’d send her well-wishes and hope to rekindle at least part of the relationship that died when we moved from Ohio to Arizona.
A few months after I didn’t get her the card, I received a frantic, crying phone call from my mother. Grandma Ashcraft had died.
Even while we were still living there she had started to get rid of her pets. She claimed she was just too old to take care of them anymore. There were no new dogs, no new cats. When she found kittens, she’d try to get homes for them outside of her home. She’d gotten rid of her properties, selling them off one by one.
Passive, but still suicide.
When a diabetic heart patient with a pace-maker stops taking their medication, they know it’s a death sentence. It is a choice, albeit a semi-passive one, to die. It bothers me that she died alone and that she didn’t contact any of her family. It bothers me that I didn’t send that damned holiday card. It bothers me that I waited for a next year that never came.
The point I want you to take away from this story is simple. Don’t wait. Don’t think that you’ll get the next year. Don’t sit and plan about what you’ll do with the time you have left to catch up with the love one you’ve lost contact with, with the family member you’ve drifted apart from and miss. Do it now.
I am one of those people who always puts it off, thinking there will be a better moment/day. When I have extra money to visit my relatives (who are out of town), I always use it for something for myself or my family or my house.
I really need to change all of that.
I know it was a upheaved time but Carla wasn’t the one to call you. I was the one that called because mine was the number that Grandma had given them and had saved because i had tried to get ahold of her right before she died…I wish i would have sent a picture too. Dorothy had asked for one and i just didn’t have any to give. I remember i was the one that had to call everyone because it was the one of the most horrible list of phone calls i’ve had to make.
@Jill
You do need to stop that. It sounds dire, but someone in your life is going to die before you get to see them again. In the worst case, before you get to reconcile some petty difference. Do it now.
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@Cory
I believe you. There were several frantic, crying calls from our mother, so it’s difficult to really place who and where and what sometimes. She was calling me every day there for a little.
It really does get you in touch with mortality.