Goodbye to the dearest grandparents
My grandfather died in January this year. He had dementia, and for a few years we had thought he probably wouldn’t be with us for very much longer. When he died, he was 94 years old and had lived a beautiful life surrounded by his family: his children, grandchildren, and, for the last four years, his first great-grandchild — our daughter.
In January, he fell and was in a lot of pain. He really didn’t want to go into a nursing home, and my grandmother wanted to care for him until the very end. So, after his fall, a few days later it was decided to give him medication to keep him comfortable and asleep.
He spent four days peacefully sleeping, giving his closest loved ones the opportunity to say goodbye. And then he peacefully went his way.
During the six months that followed, we saw my grandmother slowly release some of the stress she had carried from the past years of taking care of my grandfather. She had lots of visitors and started picking up all kinds of fun activities. She became excited about the future again.
But she also really missed my grandfather.
They had been married for 67 years. Can you imagine that?
My grandmother had already lived through so much before that. She grew up in a household with four sisters and a brother, raised by their mother after their father died when she was only nine. And after that, she spent the rest of her life with my grandfather, his family, and eventually their own family.
She also lost a lot of weight after my grandfather died, which made us a little worried.
In July, she went to Ireland for two weeks with her son and his wife. From everything I heard, it was a really beautiful experience for all of them.
I was planning to visit her sometime this week.
But, as I shared in my last post, she died about a week ago, and we buried her last Saturday.
It was a very beautiful funeral. Especially because my grandparents had chosen such a lovely place to spend eternity: a natural burial ground in a park, where people can be buried in nature.
Dead among the living.
They both rest in woven baskets, in a place where they can be together forever. My grandfather is buried underneath my grandmother.
I find that incredibly romantic.
For now, this is what I wanted to share.
I guess this is partly my way of processing everything, because it is really difficult for me to feel all of it right now. It hurts a lot. I had all these plans of things I wanted to do with my grandmother, and I really wasn’t prepared for her to leave us so soon.
I had hoped she would have had a few more years to make joyful new memories with us.
Especially because I haven’t seen my grandparents very much over the past five years, and I have missed them so much. I don’t live very close to them anymore, and I was constantly overstimulated by motherhood.
I know they understood that. They only ever wanted me to feel okay.
But if I could go back, I would visit my parents more often so I could have seen my grandparents more often too. I would have asked for help sooner. I would have told my family that I needed a babysitter, so I could have time to recover and still do the things that were important to me, instead of giving up on myself completely.
Now I feel a lot of sorrow over the time that was lost.
I know I have to accept that things happened the way they did and learn from it. But I think this is also part of what makes grieving so difficult for me. I feel like I didn’t do my best.
Even though I know that I did the best I could with what I knew and what I was capable of at the time.
Still, it hurts.