Posted by J on Thursday, August 9, 2012.

I had just finished painting one of the down stairs bedroom and I took an early shower. I usually do it right before bed or first thing in the morning. I was washing my hair when I started thinking about my husband and our "plans" so many things we thought we wanted. I know how "temporary" becomes permanent. I know how things tend to fall apart and then other things end up falling together. Despite all our planning, or attempts to plan, other things just crop up. Someone breaks a hand (hubeast) or a kid needs glasses (Eldest, and Middle Girlie), life just gets in the way of all of our planning but it's still fun, sometimes, to think about what we would like to be doing in the future knowing full well that these plans are little more than dreams that apear a little fuzzy around the edges in our minds. Like looking through a veil of fog.

I'm 30 now. We are not where we thought we would be now, not in any sense of the word but things are good. We (our family) is all together. We got a puppy. We are learning to deal with things as they happen and not plan ahead too much. It's hard because naturally I am a planner, maybe it's because I am the oldest child, or maybe I'm just a control freak (true on both counts) but I'm trying to let go and just enjoy the time and the moments that I have that are calm and sweet. As I've gotten older I've said that I just want a quiet, boring life, and for the most part that is true. The things that I thought were important when I was younger just aren't. We're here, we're alive, we're breathing.

My Grandmother died in May just before Mother's day. She never drove a car, heck she never even wore pants in her entire life. She always wore stockings when she went out of the house and beads. She always had a rain hat in her "pocket book" (purse) she carried tissues and would kneed them in her hands until they clung to themselves becoming pulp. She was 94 years old. She was a housewife, a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother many times over. She died at home.

I never asked her if she was happy, we didn't talk about those things. What I did know about her was that she loved children, she knew all of our names despite the fact there was many (many) of us grandchildren. She knew all my kids' names. She always smiled and laughed, sometimes at nothing, like joy was bubbling out of her. Once, when I was a senior in high school she asked my parents to take her to Niagara Falls in Canada so she could see it. We never understood why, a woman who was afraid of water her entire life, wanted to see Niagara Falls but we went. The first night we were there she tripped and fell over a parking block in the lot of the hotel. She looked like she was beat with a bat, her eye blackened immediately but she refused to go home and we spent a week up there eating pizza in our hotel room at night and watching weddings in the park beside the falls during the day. It was one of the best vacations we ever took and I think it was the furthest from home she ever was. I have pictures of her holding each of my children when they were babies. It was important to me to have them.

She's only been gone for two months but it seems like forever and also seems like it just happened. I just wonder, you know, if she was happy or did she just not think about it. She was raised to take care of others, she dropped out of school in eighth grade because her mom got sick and she needed to stay home to take care of her younger siblings. She said she cried when she was told she couldn't go back to school but in the end she did what she needed to do. I just hope I can be that strong when it comes down to it, when it comes down to doing what I want or doing what's best for my family. It seems like now everyone is so obsessed with being fulfilled in their lives and living dreams I just wonder how she felt about all of this and I'm upset with myself that I never thought to ask her and now I'll never get that chance and I regret that.

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