This week I said goodbye to my Grandma. I have now attended 3 funerals in my life, and I would have thought that this feeling of losing someone would start to get a little more manageable by now; alas, it has not. I think I am only just beginning to understand that when someone in your life passes away, you lose not only them, but also all of their friends, their connections to the world, their personality, their influences... and something else changes too. There is something different within my family - the balance has changed, almost like a change in the wind.
I have just returned from a week in Canada, where one side of my family lives and my Grandma lived too. It was full of preparations for the funeral, supporting my mom and her sisters, the funeral itself and of course everything that comes afterwards. It really is amazing how complicated and intricate a person's exsistence in this world is - I've never even thought about all the passwords, accounts, subscribtions, appointments and committments that just one person has.
One really great thing that came out of this week, was that I got to meet and talk to lots of people that I have never met; friends of my Grandma, friends of our family, old friends, friends of friends... So many people were able to tell me small things about Grandma that I didn't know. I really regret that I didn't know her better in these ways, but I guess I knew her in another way - the way a granddaughter knows her grandmother. Anyway, I wanted to write down here a few of the things that I didn't know about her, so that I won't forget them.
~ She loved owls. (This is relevant to me as I have a tattoo of an owl!)
~ Her favourite colour was purple.
~ She told her friends about my blog.
~ She had a special utensil for cutting chives. I didn't know this existed, or that she liked chives enough to get one!
~ She owned many, many scarves. Several drawers of them.
~ She enjoyed listening to my recordings, she thought they were good.
~ She watched 'Mad Men', my favourite TV show.
~ She kept a little food diary.
~ She had almost no novels at her apartment, only big high-brow art books. I think she got her novels from the library, or on her kindle.
~ She wrote incredibly beautifully. I had never heard or read any of her writing before I heard it at her funeral.
~ She kept a bit of paper with my blog web address scribbled on it in a drawer next to her chair.
~ She loved pandas.
~ She started her day, every day, by reading the newspapers.
~ Her fingers were long and thin. I guess I knew this, but didn't really know it, until I tried on her rings this week.
~ She and I both have a framed picture by the artist Egon Shiele above our desks.
Rest in peace, Grandma Gwen xxxLabels: Thoughts
