My 3 Grandmas.

I'm going to avoid an obvious and timely topic today for something completely different; A trip to Grandma's house.

If there's anything I've learned recently, life is fragile and precious. It can only last for so long, and cherishing every moment is huge. Important beyond belief.

I remember, when my Grandma died many years ago, a woman stepped in to take her place. Her name was Elizabeth Patton, and she was my Grandma's Cousin. I was very young at the time.

I remember going over to her house quite a few times, and she had a dog. The dog loved playing with me, and we would chase each other around the house for what was probably hours. Elizabeth would say that it was good excersise for her dog, so she didn't mind.

I remember a time when she took care of me for a few days when my parents were away. We went shopping one day, and she noticed I was looking at a mat that you could roll out on the floor that was actually like a mini-town map made for cars (some of you would remember the exact mat; the street plan was basically an oval-track, with railroad tracks on one side, and a kind-of rural scene on the other, with extremely out of scale buildings and houses scattered about, everything 2D). Without a word, she bought it for me.

I saw her maybe twice after I passed the age of 11. Possibly at a wedding, and I vaguely remember another time, but that was it. I still loved her, and still felt she was in my life. This last December, I made a plan to visit her for the first time as an adult.

I called my Dad to get her phone number. I knew she would probably be in a nursing home by now, or something along those lines. I'd been neglecting the visit for so long, I really didn't know where I was going to find her.

"Didn't anyone tell you?" was my father's response. "She died a few months ago."

I thought for a moment about crying. But all I felt was bad. I can't describe the emotion, I just felt bad. Not bad as in "I'm a bad person", bad as in, not happy.

But I needed that. It let me realize that some situations are not possible to control, that I can't always have a storybook ending with everyone in my life, and that I can't always get what I want.

I'm going to visit a woman in Blind Bay, British Columbia that did a very similar thing for me. When my Grandma passed away, she also said she would like to be my new Grandma. She is her sister. She's passed 80, and she still does landscaping/lawncare for her neighbours. I have been visiting her every year for about 5 years.

She has a graveyard at the bottom of her yard. Really, she does. She joked one time that when she dies, she'll just roll down the hill to her grave.

I don't know why, but I like that one.