Anybody who is lucky enough to have had relationships with their grandparents know that the love you feel from a grandmother is a special. As a kid I had the privilege of having relationships with all FOUR of my grandmothers (I won't get into semantics).
I'm lucky to be able to say that three of my grandmothers are still "here", even if my relationships with them have changed a little as I've gotten older. But I'm writing this post because a few nights ago I had a dream about the grandmother that I lost.
It was one of those moments when you wake up with a smile on your face because the dream made you happy. You don't remember any of the specifics, maybe it was a pleasant memory or just something conceived completely by your imagination. But you just know it made you happy.
But the longer I layed there thinking about her, my mood started to change because I started to realize that now as an older, more mature man I can look back and recognize everything about her that made her such a great grandmother and beautiful person but it stinks that if I didn't realize it back then, then there's no way I could have expressed it, which would mean she would have no way of knowing how much I appreciated and loved her.
And trust me, you can kiss sleep goodbye whenever you have a late night epiphany that makes you feel like a sh***y person.
As a child you wear your emotions on the outside. So if you love someone or think someone is funny or nice, or smart, they'll know it because you'll tell them or show them somehow. Then when you get a little older it's not cool anymore to put all of your emotional cards on the table like that so you leave them bottled up. Then you get even older and you realize that it is important to express how you feel to your loved ones but your "life" takes up all of your time and you just never get around to it. I think that's where I was in my life when I lost my grandmother. I knew what her significance was to my life and I knew how I felt about her, but I just never got around to telling her.
I know what people will say, "don't be too hard on yourself" or "she knew how you felt", but I'll always ask myself, how would she know if I didn't tell her? I think I should continue to be hard on myself and allow these feelings to sink in so that I don't let this happen again.
I'm sure people told her all the time that she was a good wife, great mother, wonderful grandmother and a beautiful, kind woman with an amazing spirit.
But after everything she did for me as a kid, I just wish I had a chance to be one of those people.
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