This diary has nothing to with our move, or my MiL (though she's out of the cleaning frenzy, she's driving us both nuts but this too shall pass eventually). Its about the hard lessons I learned 31 years ago when my grandmother and my first husband died within a month of each other. Those are the sort of life lessons you never forget, and gain wisdom from.
My grandmother's death was not unexpected.She had spent the previous 4 months paralyzed on one side of her body and aphasic, victim of a massive stroke; a second stroke took her life. She was 83, born at the turn of the last century, fort generation born in America. She had only an 8th grade education, worked as a maid at a prestigious girl's boarding school and in a factory. She was Black Irish with hair so dark it was almost blue-black, deep brown eyes made for laughter and a pale olive complexion that tanned more in a single day than I do in a year in Florida,and she was kind, gentle, loving, infinitely forgiving, and bawdy as hell. She and my grandfather lived with us my entire life, and when she died, I lost my other mother.
Yet I prayed for her to die if she couldn't get better, which she couldn't. I wanted her to suffer as little as possible after the first stoke, and I thanked the Goddess Brigid that it was mercifully quick. Would I have liked more time with her? Damned straight, but I wanted her at peace and out of the awful condition she was in for her sake.
A month later, on the Monday before Easter (I have banished the exact date, and settle for remembering that I hate Easter) my 29-year-old first husband died the Monday before, buried on Holy Saturday, and it was damned hard finding an Irish piper for his burial during the Easter Rising commemorations).It was an undiagnosed heart problem from heart scarring due to asthma and rheumatic fever a a child. You'd never have guessed it to look at him, and he'd been fencing the day before. I loved him with my whole heart and his death came close to breaking me, but I survived. I really didn't have a choice.
He looked like a back-haired version of Benedict Cumberbatch, and seems to have stepped out of a Roger Zelazny novel. He was used as the model for Corwin in the reprint of Nine Princes in Amber. Honorable to a fault, he was soft-spoken, gentle, and kind. Remember the scene in Roadhouse when Patrick Swayze tells his security team to be nict until it's time not to be nice? That was him. Never lost his temper unless someone he cared about was being threatened or hurt. He had three black belts, two brown, was a competition fencer in high school, and had studied kenjutsu.
But at 29, he was dead.
Lessons learned from this were many but these are the important ones.
1. Don't hold back when you love someone, whether it's as a friend, a family member or a spouse. Yes, losing them will break your heart, but hearts heal even when they break--and the capacity to love grows with each loss and each love.
2. When you lose someone, TELL THEM. You never know if this will be the last time, and the one thing you will regret when they leave are the times when you didn't say "I love you" when you had the chance.
3. You mourn in direct proportion to how much you love. Sure, the loss is devastating, but the rewards are so much greater than the pain.
4. When you are angry with the one you love--and no one can drive you crazier than a spouse--don't cling to the anger and be the first to forgive. If you need to sleep on it after a quarrel, do so; you'll be much more willing to forgive if you've slept enough. I've reached the point where I've forgiven MiL for making us give up Cleo to our nephew. Just not worth hanging on to the feelings. It took me more time than I'd have liked to reach this point. Forgiving is not the same as forgetting, however.
5. Not everyone will like and support you. Be grateful for the ones who do, and especially for the ones who love you. Love is a precious gift.
6. From my grandmother: accept help gracefully and gratefully. When it's your turn to help someone, make them feel that they are doing you a favor by allowing you to help--because they are.
7. Some forevers are shorter than others. Cherish the time you have with the ones you love.
I won't be around to babysit this diary--I simply have too much crap to do. But I wanted to share these thoughts while they''re fresh in my mind.