15 Months

"It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening."  - Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Rockets are in the play offs.  They lost their first game.  Justin Verlander pitched a complete, no-hitter, giving him 2500 K's.  He's one of 33 pitchers in history to do that.  My son's soccer team won their game on Saturday.  His sweet friend Danny scored another goal.  They won 5-3.  Somehow, miraculously, the cleaning service came in and got my house cleaned.

Everywhere, all over the world, people got up and did the normal things they always do.  The sun rose, the sun set.  All things were as they have been and will be.

But for us the world stopped on Thursday afternoon.

I thought the big drama of the day was going to be that Grady fell in the hallway in school and cut his head.  I picked him up and then picked up the littles and then took him to the ER.  But while I was at the ER, I got a phone call from my mother that my aunt had collapsed.

And the world stopped, for us.

I'm home again and doing home things.  Going through the motions.  D's preschool graduation is today.  Grady is back at school after missing three days.  I need to do the laundry and make the beds and order the groceries.

Grief like this is new for me.  Which - as I have said - means I have lived a very blessed life.  I recognize that.  All the deaths I've experienced have been in order, at the good and right time.  My grandfather passed away at 92, and he was more than ready to leave.  My grandmother passed away at 95.  It seems reasonable to die in your 90s.

60s is harder to swallow.

But she was a grandmother, to a few grandchildren.  She had traveled.  She did and maintained relationships and helped and nurtured.  She did what she wanted to, when she wanted to.  What more can an individual ask for in this life?

I know all these things, rationally.

Emotionally I am less sure.  Emotionally we were all supposed to go to D.C.  Emotionally we were all planning lots of visits and things.  Events.  Birthdays.  She wanted to bring her grandchildren to my house for spring break.  She kept trying to get them together.

I wish I had been more flexible.  I wish I could have seen the future.  I wish I had known.

Don't we all.

Mostly I wish I had seen her more recently, had given her that last hug, told her I appreciated her and loved her and all her effort and just to say ... I see you.  I see all the things you do for others that they take for granted.  That I see everything you've done all your life.  That I know how much work it was for you to make those albums and books and dresses and quilts and all the heirlooms that are so precious.  That I love that you sent grandma's Christmas ornaments out.

I wish you had been pampered more. I wish you would have let yourself be pampered more.  I wish ... I wish ... more than anything.  More than life.

In the end I hope she felt loved.  In the end I hope she was content and knew that she mattered and that she left a legacy on earth through her children and grandchildren and through her friends and extended family.  Her reach was wide.  Lewis believes that in her final moments she had a feeling of total peace, and that she was ready to move on, her life's work was complete, and she painlessly and joyfully went to Heaven, to meet with her friends and family there and to forever be with Jesus.  And she was a believer, and she lived a good life.  Not that good works gets you into heaven.  Belief and faith.  And she had both.

So we pray for those of us left behind.  This next year is going to be hard.  Especially this summer.  She is such a staple to me, more than an Aunt.  Her house is more than a home.  She recognized the hardships of my childhood and really and truly tried to compensate by giving me her address.  She really and truly tried to give us roots by being our roots.  She loved me as her beloved sister's child; special to her in a way only known to sisters.  I can not explain this bond.  It's a special bond among women and sisters.  It is unique in all the world.  And my daughter will experience it with her Aunt, because my mom and my beloved aunt showed us how it is best done.

The bonds of the women in my family are tight, secure and firm.  I take so much strength from that.

I know that she enjoyed and was proud that her daughter and I are close, that I love her grandchildren.  That the net of our family covers them all.  These connections are everything.  And she cherished them.

We will move on and be fine.  Because as I said for the past week ... we have no other choice.  We will keep going.  We will be sad.  But we will be fine.  And she knew that and from somewhere in heaven she knows that.  And I hope that when she passed she was able to have comfort and peace in the understanding that she had done so much good here on earth and we will forever miss her.

"And when you get down to it, that is the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love." Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd