A Goodbye with a Dash of Perspective

I wrote out a very, very long post about the madness that happened over this Christmas week and at the end I realized that I didn’t want to read it.  If I don’t want to read it, then you shouldn’t have to read it either.  Some very serious and much more important things happened in the last two days (which I will explain in detail below and which I hope you take the time to read) that make all of these issues seem unimportant yet I still feel the need to give you the summary version:

Thursday: Parents arrive.  Windy road, darkness, rain, rental car.  Fried nerves.

Friday: Pink eye, rain and crafty GiGi.  Lots of hugs and kisses from PopPop and GiGi.

Saturday: Pink eye, we left Oozy & Cough-y with PopPop & GiGi for date night with llamas.

Sunday: Hiking, more llamas, pink eye gone, heater blown, sick dad, gas leak, heater fixed, heater broken, more gas, gas leak fixed.

Monday: Heater broken, heater fixed, heater broken, sick dad, pink eye #2.

Tuesday: Christmas, dad in emergency room, bronchitis, heater still broken, presents, Kitchenaid mixer (awesome), happy children, dad out of emergency room (awesome).

Wednesday: Heater still broken, heater fixed, heater broken again.  Dad still sick.  Went ice sledding. Got some very bad news.

Thursday: Mom & Dad leave.  Heater fixed, heater broken. Heater fixed, thermostat replaced.  Is this the end?  We shall see…

On the upside, only 2 out of 5 people got pinkeye, so apparently we can survive a plague.

Now that we got that out of the way it’s time for the serious part.  I really appreciate those of you who will take the time to read this.

We got a phone call on Wednesday morning that my YiaYia had died on Christmas night.  We knew this was coming.  She was 90 and had dementia and was living in hospice.  This doesn’t make the news hurt any less.

I did not know my grandmother very well.  We lived several hours away from them and only saw them at Christmas and then later when they moved to FL we would visit every year in February.  One of my memories is that she used to make me hot dogs with cheese wrapped in crescent rolls and she would serve them with A&W Rootbeer, which in my opinion was a perfect meal at the time!  She always had some kind of candy in a dish on her coffee table, which was gold for a young child.  She loved to wear bright colors and lots of jewelry (like any good Greek woman should).  That’s how I choose to remember her.  Big and bright like she was when I was little.

I decided to ask my dad to write down some of his favorite memories of his mother.  He knew her as only a son and firstborn child can.  I will never know that woman my father knew and felt it was important to share with you his memories of her.

He told me,

“When I was 10, I got a terrible stomach ache in school.  I was sent to the nurse, who thought I must be faking.  When she called my mom and told her I was probably trying to avoid a test, my mom dropped the phone, sped to the school, grabbed me and took off to the hospital.  My appendix burst on the operating table.  There were many complications so I spent quite a while in the hospital.

This is the essence of how I remember mom.

The next fall she campaigned to get elected to the Board of Education.  She won the election, fired the nurse soon after and spent the next 6 years on the Board because someone didn’t treat her kid right.

That was my mom.”

I can see where my dad and I get our intensity from!

Thank you, dad, for sharing that intimate memory of YiaYia.  I can’t even imagine what it must be like to lose a parent and I hope I don’t have to experience that for a long time!

As we were dealing with all of this yesterday the elderly neighbor had an ambulance at their house. The man is dying of heart failure. He was alive when they took him away but I can only imagine what his wife must be going through.  I hope she gets to bring him home again soon.

I feel like we all live in our own worlds and we are entitled to feel the way we do about what’s going on in our lives but sometimes it’s good to be reminded that it’s a big world out there with things happening that most of us will never experience.  I can’t save the world or take away the pain some people will experience and knowing that makes it almost unbearable to think about.  Still, I welcome these reminders because they help me to see that even though this Christmas may not have been ideal, we were all here, together, alive and able to give each other hugs and kisses and that’s enough.

Here’s to 2013!