Last Saturday night after I had put my children to bed I received a call. My grandmother, Lucy, had passed away. She was 99 years old and at the end of her life but it still didn’t make receiving that call any easier. My husband was out, my children were asleep and I buried my head in my pillow and cried. It wasn’t rational. While she hadn’t really been ill, she was 99. When my mother, who had been in town a couple of weeks ago, told me that wasn’t sure if Gram would be around to celebrate her 100th birthday with us over Thanksgiving I was surprised. I’m not sure why. I am 41 and my grandmother has been such a profound influence in my life. While most of my friends have never even known their grandparents, I’ve had mine for what amounts to probably half my life (hopefully.) Why did she make such an impact? I think because we were so much alike. She was stubborn and opinionated but kind and compassionate. She could be blunt to the point of causing a rift but generous always and bailed me out on more than one occasion. At times she could be selfish—putting herself ahead of everyone else. At the funeral we were looking at scrap books and I saw pictures from a trip she and my grandfather took to Italy in June of 1965 (right when I was born.) When I think of how involved my parents have been in the lives of my children—being there practically the day they were born, I can’t give her extra points for helping out. But still, somehow, she always was there when I needed her. When I was five and my younger sister was a newborn coming home from the hospital, I had the chicken pox. We lived in Detroit and at the time my gram lived in Chicago. What could my mom do? There was only one choice—she shipped me away to my grandparents until I wasn’t contagious anymore. During that trip I must have felt dejected. Old kid out, new kid in. But my grandmother knew how to make me feel special too. She took me to the Lincoln Park Zoo and bought me a balloon (really she convinced my grandpa to do it since he was notoriously cheap.) It made me feel important.Telling my children about Grandma Lucy’s death has been a challenge. Whenever you deal with issues of mortality with a six year old (especially one already obsessed with death) you tread on very shaky ground. And it brings up issues you may or may not be ready to talk about. I’ve been preparing them but I didn’t bring them to the funeral. To a certain extent that makes it “not” real for them which is something we’ll continue to address. In the meantime, I wanted to share this site I found that helps try to “kidify” the subject and put it into a healthy, positive context.
Posted on September 24th, 2006 by Sam
Filed under: Uncategorized
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