A life-long gift!

Often, days begin with flat emotions, unsure of what to expect and how to feel.  In a place full of history, hurt, love, and times rather forgotten, my heart beat, waiting for my mind to decipher the scenario so that it could leap or plummet.  Like many others, I live far away from those that I call family.  Now, as I return home for the funeral of one of our most adored patriarchs, I am torn between happiness and sadness.  I am happy because I know that my grandmother's broken heart, from losing my grandfather three and a half years ago, is mended for eternity.  My sadness comes as I wonder, with both grandparents gone from earth, how our family will remain glued together and who will step up and into such loving shoes? 

Since I was born, my grandmother had loved without judgement and always with great care.  Her kind words gave us hope during rough times and brought great satisfaction to our souls.  When we had family get-togethers, I would travel across the country just to see her and feel her loving arms wrap around me.  She wanted nothing more than for our family to be close.  She wanted us to always be together and forgive wounds of the past.  She wanted healing for each of us though none of us could heal her from aging.  Today, as grandmother rested in her white box with painted on flowers and a pink interior, her wish came true, at least for today.  Her family was together and things once thought important or hurtful between family members had been forgotten, maybe even forgiven, as we relished in her legacy and offering us a life-long gift: love!

Making the best of the worst.

It's early, the dark sky helps the street lights to reflect the drizzling rain on the window.  Bright beads of moisture fall to the ground.  I am a bit unsettled this morning, having just flown across the country to be with family and attend my grandmother's funeral, my eyes are noticing every spec of detail that surrounds me.  The beach painting on the wall and the plaques neatly lined up across the mantel.  Photos from the 70's and reed stalks standing at attention in the corner.  I ask myself why they are there.  Now, as I sit and type on a faster computer than mine, I accept that I am not in my warm, cozy den of a space.  I am not home, which causes my senses to be on high-alert and decipher what's around me.  Though being here isn't truly new, being that it is my family, it is more that we lost a cherished and adored woman and I don't think we know what to do next.  Her death is hard to make sense of.

That's the beauty in writing.  It is often difficult to make sense of the process yet as we live through it, developng space and characters, researching facts and timelines, marketing, reaching out, and all of the "stuff" that comes with it, as a writer, I embrace every little detail of it, liked or disliked.  One thing that my grandmother taught me in life was to never sway from what you believe in.  For me, I believe in every character that I write about, every scene that is created, or on the non-fiction side, every person that my professional background will help through my experiences that I can share in words.  Before all of that, I believe in myself and I am grateful that I had a grandmother who believed in me too!  When we face tough times and not-so-good moments, it is easier to get through them when we recall the easy times and those extraordinary happenings that we were blessed to be a part of.  I will get through her funeral.