FOUR YEARS AND CHANGE

In the year 2010 in the month of March, I lost my grandfather.

Well, I guess I didn't lose him, I mean, I know where he is. But he's not here. It's hard to believe that it's been over four years since I've heard his voice or felt his arms around my body, enveloped in a tight squeezing hug.

Sometimes I get really sad about it, and I don't know that I can figure out exactly why. I'll just find myself thinking about him and wishing that I had been given the opportunity to really get to know him. I feel robbed, is the word that most accurately describes my emotion I think.

I suppose I'm lucky, though. I do have three remaining grandparents. I also don't know what it's like to lose a parent, a pain that I can't even fathom if I try my hardest.

Actually, this was probably the first real tragedy I had experienced in my life. I remember coming back from dinner and finding my phone in my dorm room with six missed calls from my father. I was wearing a purple shirt. With a pounding heart I called him back and then subsequently collapsed onto the bed in tears, phone in hand, dad still on the line.

Parkinson's disease is cruel. It affects the motor cortex of the brain, thereby affecting their ability to walk and talk. There are a plethora of other ugly things that come along with it and the medication prescribed to help handle it, but it's a slow moving disease and unfortunately for me I don't remember the early years of the Parkinson's - before it had taken its toll on my grandpa.

Now I'm left with stories and pictures of a man I desperately wanted to get to know. He was almost always happy, with a very sweet and caring disposition. I know a lot of times people tend to glorify someone after they die, making them seem more amazing than they actually were. But I really don't believe that's the case here. And that's part of why I'm upset that I only got to know him for so short of a time period.

Nineteen years is not nearly long enough, especially when you live in two separate states. But at the same time, nineteen years is better than no years at all.

Love you, gramps.♥

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day, Gramps.

A Year Later

A year ago this happened. The world would never be the same again. 

On Being Little

When I was little I didn't have a favorite color. My favorite color changed all the time. Some days it was purple. Some days it was green. One day I got a yellow towel because that's what I thought was my favorite was. When people would ask me what my favorite color was I would either tell them that I didn't know, or I would make up a color that sounded good and really convincing.

But I didn't have a favorite color. It was devastating. Life-threatening. I must've been the only kid without a favorite color, I thought!

It's funny how little kid minds work. Obviously I wasn't the only kid to not know what her favorite color was, but I sure felt like it.

And when I was six we were selling my mom's car because our little family had outgrown its spacious five seats. We would run errands around town with a black and orange For Sale sign in the back window. I was absolutely petrified that someone was going to come and buy our car while we were out and we would be forced to walk home.

I remember going on vacation to a resort where we got to stay in a cabin with my father's parents and his sister and her family. My cousin and I were sharing a room, and it was really hot in our room. She insisted that the window be open to let in some cooler air, and I insisted that the window stay closed lest a bear pop up out of nowhere and gobble us up! I think I was about nine or so.

Also, I played a lot of pretend when I was little. Other kids have memories of all these movies they watched and all these video games they played and I have memories of pretending to be a little Indian girl. I pretended to be Fern from Charlotte's Web and bring my momma a basket of 'eggs.' I would periodically ask her "Where's Poppa goin' with that ax?"

Some days I was Laura Ingalls Wilder living in a cabin in the woods. I would run around outside barefoot doing all sorts of things that I thought Laura would have done. I pretended my bike was a horse. I even gave her name and rode her around everywhere.

I absolutely loved to pretend I lived on a ranch. I would run around the backyard completing invisible chores like feeding horses, mucking stalls, collecting eggs, herding cattle. Life on my ranch was so busy! I had dogs and cats to take care of and chickens to feed!

My old neighborhood was filled with children around my age and TheKeeper's age. We would do all sorts of outrageous things. We fantasized about starting a neighborhood newspaper until my mother called that one to a screeching halt by asking who was going to pay for all the paper and the ink we used? Thwarted, we moved on to bigger and better things. Like starting our own band.

And by band, we meant 'singing group' because none of us could play an instrument besides faking the keyboard like the good elementary schoolers that we were. We even got in a fight about it and formed two 'rival' bands. We were going to put on concerts the same day and whoever got more people to show up to their concert won bragging rights.

We were going to hit it big for sure.

We climbed tress and hay bales from the farm that lived at the end of our street. We used to feed their cows grass too. But now the farmland is all houses and subdivisions, no little kids riding bikes on the old dirt road and wreaking havoc and running amok.

And by the way, my favorite color is blue.

An Ending

Sunday night I found out some horrible news.

I talked to my dad on the phone, knowing something was wrong but not sure exactly what. I thought about his cancer. Maybe something had gone really wrong?

Until he said these words "Grandpa died today"

I didn't understand. Grandpa wasn't supposed to die. Grandpa was supposed to live forever.

I had heard that it was bad. Our trip down to SoCal for Christmas was because my dad really felt like this would be Grandpa's last Christmas. His dementia was worsening. His health was deteriorating. Still, I didn't want to believe.

I wanted to think that my grandpa would make it to see me graduate college. It's just a couple years away. I wanted him around when I finally got married, to see how beautiful I will look on that day. A big part of me knew that he would never make it that long, but still there was that little part of me that hoped beyond hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd still be around.

It's hard. It's so hard to look at pictures, taken just a year ago. To think about Christmas, just a couple of months ago. It's hard to do that and not tear up at the thought of never being able to wrap my arms around him again.

I'm so far away from what's going on, that I feel like I will be able to fly down there and he will be there, ready to hug me when I walk in the door. We can go for a walk around the neighborhood like we used to.


I loved the sound of my name from his lips.   

My grandpa was an amazing man. An awesome husband, a good dad. He was a rowdy kid. A rolled up newspaper out one side of the car on the morning paper route and a lit match out the other.

I've heard his mother broke a broom over his backside on a weekly basis. 

He taught my dad to drive in a time where manual transmissions were the norm and I've heard the man could make gears sing. I've heard my dad tell stories of driving advice when he was having trouble keeping the car in the lane. "This isn't a sail boat, you don't need to tack into the wind."

He hated mushrooms.

I remember feeling like his disease had robbed me of getting to really know him. To know the him that was happy and active and didn't stutter when talked. But even though I felt like I wasn't as close to him as my cousins were, I could still hug him. I could still talk to him. He still loved me. 

I was his pear thief when I was little. He used to eat a lot of pears. Before we moved all the way to Idaho I would crawl up in his lap and steel bites of his pears. I still like eating pears, though these days they are the canned variety and not the fresh. Unfortunate.

Everyone keeps asking me if I'm okay. And to be honest, I have no idea if I'm okay or not. I feel like if I don't think about it, then I can't be sad. But then in quiet moments, or when I see a picture of him (because on FB we've all changed our profile pictures to ones with him) and it's hard to imagine that he's gone.

It's hard to imagine the severity of someone's gone-ness. We say goodbye, but we never really say goodbye. Our farewell's are much more in a 'I will see you again later' form and less in a 'This is the last time I will see your smiling face' manner.

Which is for the most part how we operate. And we do see each other again. So wrapping my brain around the fact that my grandpa is missing? Not something I'm too keen on doing.

I'm missing a man whom without I wouldn't even be around. He's been a big part of our family. He was my grandma's best friend. They were married for over 50 years.

It's hard to write about him in the past tense. It's hard to know that next week sometime I will be making a fast trip to San Diego for a funeral. Funeral is such a HARD word to think about. My mom told me that if I want to say a few words about him I'm more than welcome too.

I may or may not write anything. Who knows.

But one thing is certain, he's with his Maker now. And probably the happiest he's been in YEARS.

Today it thundered. It's been a joke in our family that the thunder happens when the angels go bowling and get strikes. Well, I choose to believe that he's up there bowling with them and playing a perfect game. Because everyone knows that that old man could skunk us all at bowling, even with Parkinson's disease and he grinned like a little boy the whole time he was doing it.

I just can't believe he's gone.

Secrets

Everyone has them. Big ones, little ones, important ones, trivial ones, ones that could shatter your world and ones that mend it. Or any variation and combination of private nothings. Some people tell you they're an open book, while others hide their insecurities tucked deep inside that large barricade they've placed around their heart.

I'd like to think I'm an open book, but there are some things you just don't tell some people. "Hi, I'm Cinderella and I like to mock people who walk passed me on the sidewalk."

Because, you know, I do. Mock people. Sometimes if they walk funny I'll imitate the weird way their body swaggers down the street. If it's their voice that's ridiculous, I mimic the inflections of their vocal chords. Sometimes it's the sheer stupidity of the words they are uttering, and it's this option I have the most fun with. Because I will embellish on their valley girl accent, the way in which they have used the word 'like' like fifteen like times like in a row like, you know? Like. And then I flick my hair dramatically as if the subject they had been discussing was the only thing that mattered in their tiny little underdeveloped world.

Prince HATES it when I do this.

Hates.

He thinks it's rude.

And maybe sometimes he's right. Maybe.

But only maybe.

Because mimicking people is something I've been doing for a long, long time. I mean, I'm practically a professional. Besides, I believe that if you are going to speak to another human being and every other morpheme that comes from your lips is 'like' then even if you aren't completely brainless, people are going to assume that you are. So then, in my totally professional nature, I'm going to mimic your verbalization because I think you are insane.

But I'm not going to let you know outright that I'm poking fun at how you're acting. I can't let on to the fact that I think you are absurd, because that would most likely offend you even though I really don't mean any harm with my actions.

Another confession?

I'm glad it's Thursday and that school is almost out for a month. I'm especially excited to be traveling to the great SoCal for the event of that all too important HOLYday of CHRISTmas. Besides, I do love me some grandparent affection and being with family that I get to see once in a blue moon.

Oh wait, you want a confession that's more serious?

Like, the fact the feel like I don't even know my grandpa? Yeah, I've talked before about how my father's father is cursed with Parkinson's disease and how I kind of feel robbed that I never truly got to know him. But this really bothers me.

He has trouble talking. He has trouble walking. He doesn't do a lot of stuff that I hear my friends talk about doing with their grandfathers. And I feel robbed of a relationship that so many other people have been allowed to indulge in.

I also feel for my Oma. He's not the same guy she married all those long years ago. And this man, the father of my father, is not the same person he was when my dad was younger. So many things have changed. So many years have gone by in a way that no one wishes they would have proceeded. But what can you do? We can't rewind time. We can't go back to the way things were or how we think they should be now. We're stuck with the hand of cards that God dealt us.

What I have to look forward to, however, is the fact that I will get to know him better when we pass from this life to the next - the one in heaven shared in the glory of knowing our Holy Father also. Every time I think about how I don't know him, how it feels like I've never known him, I just think about heaven and how everything will be right there. I feel like that's a long way off in the distance, so I don't let myself think about it very often or for very long.

So what about you? Any confessions you'd like to share?

I'll Be Home For Christmas

Parkinson's Disease is my least favorite out of all the diseases that I know of. I've done some research on the subject - but not near enough to make me an expert. As I've gone through school I've written a few papers about it, done a couple of speeches, but that doesn't really mean anything other than I've gained some knowlege about the subject.


One thing about Parkinson's Disease that I absolutely hate the most is the Parkinson's dimentia that consumes the mind of the infected. Actually I really hate the entire disease as a whole. Mostly because I don't have the opportunity to know my grandfather simply because his body is riddled with the disease.


My dad's dad has had Parkinson's since before I was alive. So his better years were when I was too young to remember and all I'm left with are pictures of him pulling me around the backyard of their SoCal house when I was two years old before we moved to Idaho. My cousin's have a better grasp of the truly amazing person that my grandpa was than my siblings or I can even imagine.


The last couple of years have been hard. Hard on everyone. The disease is progressing and now I don't really know how much longer he's going to be here - I just know it's not going to be an incredably long time. I know it's ridiculously hard on my oma. She lost her own mom to Alzheimer's and now her husband to Parkinson's.


I told my own dad that he simply isn't allowed to contract Parkinson's Disease. Simply not allowed.


My dad said today, in only the third time I conciously remember him tearing up, that he's known for a while his dad won't be here long, but seeing it in print the other day (I think in an e-mail, but since I don't live at home anymore I'm not completely sure) is what rattled him the most.


He said he wants to go home for Christmas.


That struck a chord with me.


Home to me is Idaho. That's not where I was born, but it's where I've been raised. I don't think I'll live here forever, but for now this is home. But Dad was raised in California. He jokes about leaving as soon as he could because he doesn't want to live here anymore, but then today he called it home.


Home.

I didn't really think that my dad considered California home. I always figured Home was here. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that home is where your parents are. I live in Moscow when I'm at school and I live in Rathdrum when I'm at work over the summer - but home is here where my parents live.


They talk about moving to Montana and when they do, I'm not sure where home would be for me then.


I saw a sign once that said home is where the heart says 'Ahhhh'


So where is that?


I just know that this disease has taken more than it's fair share of heartache on our family. It's robbed me of a grandparent. It brought out a side of my father that I don't see at all.


And as I sit here in the family room of my parents' house with The Keeper and Cinco as they play Halo 3, I'm a little excited at the possiblity of going to Cali this winter for Christmas and I'm a little sombered because I don't know how much longer my grandpa is going to remember who I am...

Grandpa trying to whistle. :)

Grandpa and me at Balboa Park


Smile :-)