Don't Ever Forget

I don't usually post more than one blog a day and I don't find time to even do that sometimes yet I feel that I need to get something out.

Death has never been something I have dealt well with and I know noone ever does. The thing is other then when my Grandma Bayless died and then my Great Grandma Barton died not long after I haven't had to deal with a lot of death. I can count on one hand how many funerals I have been to. It has been 4 exactly. Two of them were when I was about 7 years old. Those were the two I mentioned above. One was a friend who was killed by a drunk driver when I was in my twenties and the last one was on my last Birthday. That one was my Grandma Jones.

There have been other people who have passed in my life. Once I had a friend who moved a way she promised to write to me. When I heard about her writing everyone else and she never wrote to me I was hurt. A few years later I found out not long after she moved she died of cancer. I won't say I wasn't sad, because I was. The thing is I had already lost her friendship before I ever heard about her passing and so I guess even though I was sad the greater pain was the lose of the friendship. My Great Aunt Miriam died when I was a teenager and even though I was sad to hear of her passing it had been many years since I had seen. Do to all those years in between the lose of her wasn't that hard to deal with. I said my prayer for her and moved on.

The four people I went to say goodbye to were the hardest for me to lose. My Grandma Bayless took me years before I finally was able to let the pain go. Literally it took me years. I believe I was about 10 or 11 years old before I finally went a full year without crying over the lose. My Great Grandma didn't take me as long, but it did take me a while before I was able to move on. I remember saying my prayers at night and asking God if I could talk to them. I would ask him if he couldn't let them hear me to at least pass on a message for me to them. Then I would tell them all the things I wanted to say to them. Whether it was a small child's wishful heart or them actually hearing it I don't know. What I do know is that I always felt better afterwards. It was like I still had an open communication with them despite the fact I couldn't see them. Losing my friend was hard, because he was a good person. Then add to that he was young and it happened so fast. Well that took me a few years to move past. I spent several years where September was a hard month due to the memory of his passing. Then one day I sat down bought a bottle of Tequila Rose drank a drink to him and spent a night remembering him. My recent lose though is going to be the hardest of all. It has been the hardest for me.

Since losing my Grandma I try to remind myself that she is in a better place. That having her Memorial on my Birthday was a great honor. The problem is this I miss her. It is as simple as that. I may not have talked to her as much as I should have. I may not have been able to visit her as much as I wanted to. Yet the point is this I loved her. She was the best part of my childhood memories. The worst part is after losing her I realized I really didn't know much about her. All those years. All those talks. All that time spent with her and the whole time she made it about making me feel better. My whole life I wanted to grow up and be as much like her as I could. I knew I could never be exactly like her, but I wanted to have her spirit. You know that part of her that made everyone love her. Not because I wanted to be loved, but because of how that part of her made me feel when I was with her. I knew from the time I was little I would never settle for just being married to anyone. I wanted someone to look at me the way my Grandpa looked at her. I wanted someone I could care for the way she cared for all of us. I wanted to be a wife and a mother the way she was. The type that always did everything with such cheer and understanding. I don't ever remember seeing her cry or be sad. I know she must have had days when she did. My Mom told me about how my Grandma missed her Mom. So I know she must have had times where it was hard for her. Yet I some how never saw it. Well not for until the end. Even then though she smiled for me. Even that last time I saw her a month before she passed she smiled whenever I looked at her and tried to laugh for me. I know she is in a better place now. I know she feels no pain and she is with her Mother and her family. Yet I can't help feeling sad. I can't help missing her. I can't help wanting to forget that I turned another year older the day we all said goodbye. It wouldn't have mattered when the Memorial took place. That Birthday was a wash the day I heard she passed.  I knew it the moment I realized it was 4 days for until my Birthday. I am not angry. I could never be angry at her or at any memory that involved her. The thing is this. My birthdays have never been anything really special. The one year that there was something special planned for me I ended up moving. My friends told me about it when I went to leave. They were planning a surprise party for my 16th Birthday. Which just hearing about it was wonderful even if it couldn't happen. Now every Birthday is going to be hard to celebrate. I know my Grandma would want me to celebrate her being reunited with her Savior and her family. The problem is I am human which means no matter how hard I try not to be selfish I have moments that I am. I know what I should do. I know for her I shouldn't cry. I know that she would want me to be happy for her. I know she would want me to move on and be rejoiceful of the time I had with her and the time I still have here. The problem is the selfish part of me wants more time with her than I had the oppertunity to have. The selfish part of me wonders why I didn't get the chances everyone else did to spend with her when I was growing up. Why didn't I know her favorite color was pink? Why didn't I know her favorite cake? I lived with her for a while and the whole time she went out of her way to do for me and my siblings. Why didn't I take the time to ask the questions about what her favorite things were? Why didn't I ask her what her favorite childhood memories were?

You see it wasn't for until everyone else was talking about her that I realized all those times I was with her I didn't know the little things about her. Yet what I keep hearing in my heart is that those things really didn't matter. Yes, they were a part of who she was, but there was a deeper part of her that I knew. The part of her I knew was the part that she gave to me to carry on. That part was the love and understanding that she taught me. I may not have known her favorite color or her favorite cake, but I knew the way she made me feel special. I knew how she always was there for me. She always would tell me about the family. She would give me everyone's address and she would give me pictures of them. Whenever I saw her she told me how my cousins were doing and she would share stories about their lives. Through her I knew about cousins I never met. She told me about my Great Grandmothers. About both her Mother and about her step Mother. That is the part of her she gave me, because that was the part she knew I would want. I will never know what she saw in me that made her always pull me aside and tell me those stories. What I do know is how excited I would get to hear them. How those stories made me feel. She knew what I needed some how. She knew what I would relate to more than anything. It was the family as a whole that she could give me and she did. She told me about cousin Julie and her family. I could never remember all their names so I would always ask her how the J family was since all their names started with J's. I knew their last name was Pease, but I was fascinated with the fact their names all started with J's. She sent me a Christmas present one year with my cousin Kylie's picture inside a pendant that I cherished for years. You see she knew that all I wanted was the same thing she did. We wanted our family to be close. For everyone to get along and love each other. We both wanted all of us to let go of our differences and see what God had given us. He had given us the perfect gift if we would just take off the blinds of the world and see it. He had given us people who shared a tie with us. That tie could be through blood, through marriage, or even through adoption. It didn't matter how we became a family. What mattered was that we were and that we were brought together as a family for a reason. That a greater purpose decicded we were a family.

It took me losing my Grandma to remember all this. I got so wrapped up in surviving and in trying to stay above the tide that I forgot the reason I was trying so hard to survive. I forgot why all those years I sent cards and letters out to all those people I never met, but heard stories about. I did all that, because I knew that I was connected them in some way. I did it, because they were my family. No matter what any of us did none of us could change that. That was a decision that was made for us. For whatever reason that decision was made and I knew that any bond made with any of them was worth the effort made.

I may never have the oppertunity to get my whole family in one place or to have a big family reunion with most of my family being there. What I do know is this I am not going to stop trying to bring my family together. That includes my immediate family as well as all my extended family. No matter how long I live I will do my best to continue to try to keep my family connected. It is something that mattered to me when I was young. It is something that mattered to my Grandma and it is something that still matters to me now.

I am sorry if this post is a little sad. I just had to get it out there. I had to find a way to work through it. Maybe I should have written it in a journal or diary instead, but for some reason I felt it needed to be shared. That maybe some how it would reach another person who needed to hear it. I hope it helps someone else as well.