A Sad Update
On Friday, my father called me at work precisely at 9am. My breath caught and I quickly said to myself, “I’m okay.” My father was a bit puzzled by this reaction, but I told him that I knew what he was going to say.
My father told me that he was sorry, but that my grandmother had passed away during the night. Her passing was peaceful—in her sleep—and had happened sometime around 1am. I remembered that I had woken up the night before at 1am, bothered by my cold, and winced at the coincidence. Dad asked me if I was okay and I said I was even as I started to cry. I knew I would be okay, but the sadness I felt for my mother and the tears that all the memories brought weren’t letting me hold back at work. I kept it from my colleagues, but I was sent home anyway given my cold—this afforded me the opportunity to call my mother and tell her that I was sorry.
My mother sounded fine—sad, of course, but resigned. She will be flying home tomorrow and I hope to catch her in the evening even though I know she will be exhausted.
I don’t have much to add at this point. I have wonderful stories about my grandmother that I feel I’ll be posting soon, but at the moment my desire to write is nonexistent. I can’t communicate the depth of my sadness or, unsurprisingly, the depth of my relief that she’s no longer in pain. I understand that she had to move on and I accept that, but it doesn’t stop a memory from flooding me, catching me off guard, and pushing me to a sudden bout of tears. I’m not constantly sad, but there are those moments, even if it’s only once a day.
Though my desire to write is nonexistent, there are a few things that I’m slowly but surely working on, such as my year in review, my resolution review (and any new ones if I have them), my last book list, and my 2007 book awards. Maybe I will finish these in the coming weeks; life’s about to get a bit busy for a while, so we’ll see.
In the meantime, I’ll remember my grandmother and try to start the process of upkeep for this blog. As Mathgeek said in the comments of my last post, descanse en paz, abuelita.
