This Time...

This morning, I was pondering how this time last year seems as if it were four years ago. Grandpa Reneer had passed away some time in October, I believe. I don't know the exact date, because it was a surreal time. Grandpa had expressed his desire to be cremated and that was that. No jumping on plane and rushing to Florida for a funeral. No corporate mourning, as family, until Thanksgiving. I was worried about my Mom. Early in 2006 we thought she may have some sort of cancer growing in her thyroid. I remember thinking to myself that I was more worried about her grieving for her father than the day she was wheeled into surgery. The Sunday after Grandpa died, she came to my house and sat and knitted. I watched as her expressions were in a continual metamorphosis across her face. (I am like my mother in that manner...we wear our emotions on our sleeve...transparent as a glass of water.) She looked lost...then hardened...then despaired. "Stay hard" I thought. It was easier for me to see her as the tough and capable woman I had seen her be in every trial to date. "Mom's going to be okay. She's going to get through this. Maybe I can cry a little now." I know those where selfish thoughts, but grieving is, at best a very strange thing with no real rationalization. I remember being jealous of Calla and Molly because they had traveled to Florida with Mom early in the year. They had seen him "one more time". I only had stories of his deterioration and prophesies of the end to play in my head. They had mental snap shots.

I looked back on the past ten years and how many times I had thought to myself, "This will be the last time you see him." The clearest in my mind was eight years ago after Annie's wedding. We had all gone to an all you can eat buffet. I was a handful of weeks pregnant with Molly and puking every hour on the hour. (I remember we had vegetable lasagna from GFC for lunch as Annie prepared herself at my house - a fact I would have probably discarded if it hadn't haunted me relentlessly for the next ten hours. ) I remember looking at Grandpa from across the table trying to memorize him. I remember hugging him in the parking lot of the restaurant and making myself endure the Old Spice through the "morning sickness." I wanted to imprint him, thinking to myself "This time..." I cried all the way home. Brian convinced himself that it was just hormones and asked me if I wanted Steak n' Shake, because there was something about their french fries that calmed my stomach. I starred out the window and said, "un uh". I missed Grandpa already. How many times did I do that little ceremony in my head? Last year, none of those ceremonies mattered to me. This was real. He was gone. No more Old Spice hugs.

Calla and Grandpa Reneer

I miss you Grandpa.

smooch