May 6th, 2013

As a rule, I rarely share personal things on my professional site. The strange thing about this media of blogging is it encourages you to talk way too much about yourself to strangers, and I choose not to whine. However, today is a special day...if not a happy one.

I took this photo in 2009 of one of seven kittens that were born to a stray my grandmother took in. That's my grandmother in the background. The kitten found a good home and is doing well; I hear updates about her now and then. I love all those siblings born and am glad to have a nice photo of her so small.

I value this photo more, however, as an artistic photograph of my grandmother in her natural environment: sitting on her front porch, dressed in bright colors with babies all around her. Children were her favorite things, no matter the species (except perhaps rodents). She relished in her children, grandchildren, and kittens. As my grandmother aged she insisted that she never felt old. I think this is true until she got sick. 

My grandmother letting me listen to 8 tracks

My grandmother was given 4 to 6 months to live in late February of last year. I moved in with her and took care of her, with my mother taking over on the weekends, until the last day. There's never enough time. She died barely over 2 months later on May 6th. 

All life for me, and probably anyone lucky enough to have the technology and education to be reading this, is build around a set of false securities. Somewhere in Tibet a monk is quietly meditating in perfect oneness with the idea that all life is transient, but for the rest of us this realization would bring a complete break down in a flood of tears. Everyone we meet, every flower we see, every beautiful mountainside, even the sunset itself -- all these and more, some day will be taken from us.

Grandma, my little cousin, and me

Of course we mentally know this. We probably spend a little time each day thinking, is this the last time I'm going to see my grandfather? Is this the last quilt I'll ever make? Thoughts like these creep in, yet knowing something in your heart is different. The few times we Americans allow ourselves to realize the inevitable loss of any thing are times of absolute terror.

Forever may be unfathomable, but in a little while sends us screaming in a fit of terror and rage just like when we were little children. Now was all we had then, and it is also all we have as adults if we have the courage to see it.

A year later, May 6th, little has changed. Grief does not diminish. That's another thing you need to start thinking about...

My grandmother and I inspecting the garden, six years ago