Grammie

This post is really for me, I just need a place where I can put down my thoughts and memories.  It's taken me a while to write about it, just one of those things where I needed some time.  Not sure how emotional I'll end up getting so if you stop reading now I won't judge.  Grammie (my dad's mom) passed away July 7th, almost 3 weeks ago, and the funeral was July 10th.  It was very expected, honestly I think it was welcome for most of the family.  She'd been incredibly sick, not something that could be fixed or made better, so her going means she is now out of pain and suffering.  People tell me "that doesn't make it any easier" and I agree with them so I don't have to talk about it, but it does make it easier.  I know she's in heaven now, she's perfect now, no more anger, hurt, tears, fear, tiredness, sickness.  It's far easier to let her go knowing she's so much better off.  Does it hurt?  Yes.  Do I still tear up?  Yes.  She was my Grammie after all.  But it doesn't hurt for the reasons everybody assumes it hurts.  It hurts because I wish I'd spent more time with her.  It hurts because I wish she would have chosen to spend time with me as a kid instead of sitting me down in front of a TV.  I have a Pandora bracelet I got a few years ago and I decided that I would only buy new charms for important events in my life, deaths of people I love being some of those events.  My Grammie's charm?  It's going to be a baseball, because she was always sitting and watching the Red Sox play.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have any bad memories of her, I honestly can't think of a time when I was mad at her, I just don't have any really good memories of her either.  Grampie was always the one who spent time with me and my brother.  He made peeling an apple for a snack one of the highlights of our day.  He made picking acorns off his lawn a competition we looked forward to.  He taught me how to ride a bike and how to play badmitton (not that I'm any good but that's beside the point).  Getting Grampie Christmas gifts has always been far easier because he likes to do things: paint by numbers, puzzles, and many other things that he's sadly given up over the years because he can't do them any more.  Grammie...not so much.  I know that as a kid there isn't a lot I could have done that would have changed anything, but I definitely feel like I could have done things different over the last few years.  Honestly I didn't have the money to drive up to see them as often as I would have liked.  Just a fact.  But the times I did make it up there I could have spent more time, more quality time.  I could have written letters (trying to talk to either one of them on the phone was a hassle).  Really the best memories I have of Grammie are in the last couple years, when I would go up and we actually did just sit and talk.  Most of it was in the living room while watching TV but we'd still just chat.  I wish I'd done more of that.  Gotten to know her better.  I think that's my biggest regret, I never really got to know her.  Not that she made it easy, and from the stories I do know/have heard, nobody probably really did.  I wish I'd gotten a good picture of the two of us.  I wish I'd put a little more thought and time into gifts for her.  I wish I'd gone to spend more time with her.  What hurts isn't that she's gone, it's the regrets.  I know everybody always has regrets, but they always miss the person too.  I don't really miss her, there's not much for me to miss.  Which is part of the regret.  It hurts to see Grampie.  That's the worst.  That's the thing that makes me cry every time I think about it.  I'm trying to write him a letter every day now, I know it won't make up for anything, just trying to be better about things now.  I also know he probably won't be around much longer, but after I visited 2 weeks after Grammie passed, I learned that loneliness can be a physical thing, not just emotional, and I know it's not the same as being there in person, but I'm hoping it'll give him something to look forward to and will hopefully make his days a little brighter.  I think my favorite memories of Grammie are when they lived at Indian Ledge.  The closet under the stairs where all the toys were stored that my cousins and brother and I could play in for hours, all the dolls she had for us (my poor brother haha), the "munchkin room" that was especially reserved for us grandkids to spend the night, finally being able to sleep in the "big room" and sneaking out to look out over the balcony that looked into the living room and getting caught and thinking it was funny and being terrified for my life at the same time, being allowed to play her puzzle game on her computer and the fish one being my favorite, graham crackers and milk in the kitchen.  Nothing terribly outstanding, and nothing really special that she did, just that honestly most of my memories are there really.  The place they lived next she always seemed to be grumpy, and then when they had their house built in Shapleigh we moved away so I couldn't make memories there really.  I guess the nostalgic memories are what I miss the most.  I wish I could burn them on a DVD so I could just watch them play over and over.  I wish I could see all those memories through my eyes now, so I could watch her reactions/expressions/body language and learn about her that way.  I feel like even though she wasn't directly involved in a lot of my "good" memories, she was the one that provided the place for those memories to be made, and I feel like I'm a lot like her.  I don't like to be the center of attention so I tend to try and blend into the background and let other people have fun; if I plan a party I work in the background and let other people have fun.  I don't put myself out there to make good memories with people.  I don't take enough pictures with people.  I don't tell people I appreciate them and that something we did is a good memory for me and make sure it was for them too.  I make mediocre memories I feel like, like Grammie did.  I don't want people to just have OK memories of me.  And I think that's another reason I'm not "sad/upset" that she's gone because it really made me think about that, and hopefully I'll make a change in my life because of it.  Please don't think that I'm an uncaring, insensitive person.  If you'd known Grammie you'd probably feel the same way too.  Who knows, maybe I'll figure out a different charm for my bracelet, something based off change or something along those lines.  For now I'm going to try to not hold back.  Make memories.  Be more than a chat over a cup of coffee with people.