My time here in Norway is winding down to a close, and I'm getting ready to pack up all my things, some of which to mail home, and some of which to take with me across the pond to England for a month before I go back to Alabama. I'm not sure what sort of life is waiting for me back in the states; with my grandmother gone and my grandfather soon to pass away as well, I think that so many of these drastic personal changes will overwhelm me. My mother and uncle have had time to adjust to life in Huntsville without phonecalls from Nanny asking, but to me, she is still sitting in that house in the woods in Madison, or getting up early on Saturday mornings to make breakfast for both of us and Cooper. In my mind, my grandfather can't possibly be hooked up to a ventilator in a hospital in Birmingham, because in February I saw him upright and walking and talking, inviting me to come down and see him when I come home. And all I can think to myself is, "Why didn't I spend more time with them?"
I know it does me absolutely no good to beat myself up over things I can't change, and I know this is precisely what my grandparents wouldn't have wanted me to do, but they were both so important to me, and I have to wonder if they knew how much I loved them and respected them, and how much their opinions mattered to me. And I know I can pray and tell them through my faith all of these things, but it guts me in a way I don't have words for when I realize that they have gone to a place where I can't follow, I'll never hear my grandmother laugh or see my grandfather smile again, and it is inevitable that one day my parents will go like this too, and I'll have this pain again but magnified. When I think that every person in the world today must go through this at some point in their lives, it floors me that the universe has the capacity for so much grief in such a tiny, concentrated area like the Earth's surface. I'm stunned that it doesn't buckle inward from the force of so much unhappiness.
But I guess it must be held afloat by the joy our parents and grandparents give us through our lives. They teach us to speak so we can laugh, tease, joke with and love each other. They teach us to walk so they can show us places to go. They teach us family recipes that will always stay with us; the smell of simmering tomato sauce or the taste of sauteed squash taking me back to Friday nights in the third grade as if I never grew up and learned that anyone could make these things, and that they weren't just the realm of my mother's expertise. They hold us when we've been hurt and want to cry, they give us their shoulders to stand on so we can grasp our dreams and learn to pull ourselves up on our own. They aren't perfect, but then again they are, and we know that isn't a paradox because that is just how life works when you are someone's mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather.
The knowledge of what I don't have waiting for me at home steals my breath from me and makes my chest tight, but I know that this grief exists because of all the happiness I've felt for the past twenty-three years. My grandmother and grandfather loved me, and I continue to love them, and even though this pain seems unbearable to me right now, I know that it is a natural, good pain. It will never go away, but it isn't meant to. I'm not meant to recover from this loss, but to weave it into myself so that it becomes part of me and reminds me of why my dreams are worth realizing. Because they believed in me, and I'll be damned if I ever let them down.
