It’s been 10 days since my grandma died. I miss her with every breath I take.
I know she would want me to be happy, I know she would want me to remember her positively, I know she would want me to embrace life and live it to the utmost.
When I think of my grandma now I think of what a kind person she was. I think of how much she valued family, and how she appreciated every opportunity to share with others. Remembering her character and her legacy makes me want to be a better person.
She was a supremely healthy 89 year old until the last couple of weeks of her life. One day she was perfectly healthy, then she got jaundiced and was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, 2 weeks later she died. Even though you’d think we’d expect something like this to happen, it still felt very sudden and unexpected to me. One day she was carrying Gryffin around and having him dance on her lap, the next morning she was cold and breathless on her bed.
And it makes me think of Nathan. He is so full of life, so full of joy. Yet so fragile. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how delicate the thread of life is. Grandma’s death made me realize just how fragile life is, especially Nathan’s. It made me remember that he’s not even supposed to be alive and that there are so many things that could go wrong with his health.
I don’t want to live life thinking of or expecting the worst. But if there is one regret I had about my grandma’s death is that I wish I could’ve spent more time with her, I wish I could’ve taken her out on more trips and excursions, I wish I could’ve enjoyed her more.
So this is my mission now with my kids, especially Nathan. I want to enjoy them fully and deeply. I want to live deeply with that awareness that life is fragile so I can enjoy them that much more.
And along those lines, we’ve been having a lot of fun at the Andrew household. Now that we have acres to play in, the kids are having a blast running around and playing outside. Nathan gets to ride the ATV every afternoon. We’ve also started going on long bike rides, with the kids strapped in a bike trailer. They love it.
When Nathan was younger I was so focused on therapies and improving his quality of life by trying to give him more abilities. At this point our focus with him is to help him enjoy his life as deeply and fully as possible. And he sure is enjoying it 🙂
Marce, you are writing from my heart. I could replace the words the grandma by the father and Nathan by Oliver. My father also died 2 weeks after we had heard his diagnosis. I also felt pity, we did not spend more time together. I still feel pity he is not here, because I know he would be the first person who would help us. And when he died I realized that it is necessary to live our life every day. When happened, what happened with Oliver that I changed that and I know we shall live our life every minute. I have also stopped running to all therapies. I want to have energy to enjoy our live and Oliver is very outgoing person :-). I am studying Feldenkrais with Mia Segal and her daughter Leora. We have just come back from Germany today. It is held in a beautiful spa town and Oliver enjoyed that a lot as always, he never wants to come back home. We all feel very happy there and I got the idea that maybe we could move to Germany. 🙂
Marce, have lots of fun, I love the pics you posted. I am glad to see all of you happy.