![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Grandma Schultz
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 12:31 am
Well, my other grandmother died last night (Monday 8/6), shortly before 6pm EST, in the cardiovascular ICU in a hospital in Florida. My dad and his sister were with her; I'm not sure about my grandfather.
( minimal sociomedical backstory )
It took a couple hours to hit me, but then, suddenly, it actually made me much sadder than losing my first grandmother.
For one thing: I'd seen her a lot less in the past several years than my mother's mother, since I've made it out to CA at least once a year (and even got to take Tiger Boy there last fall), but only got down to FL once since they moved there in, what, 2002.
For another: Secretly, I'd hoped for years that she would outlive my grandfather -- who has always been, and let's leave it at this, a challenging person at best -- and enjoy some peace without him at the end. Naturally, the way her mind was going, it wouldn't have done her any good even if she could have. But it's still sad.
Lastly, as I ended up explaining to TB last night, she's actually the one I take after in certain pervasive ways. Physically: Although I got my mother's height, I am built like the Johnson/Schultz women (my grandmother and my aunt) -- short-waisted, small-breasted, all hips and thighs. Artistically: Both she and my grandfather made things -- he built their house, the one my father grew up in; they had a ceramics studio in the basement, complete with kiln, and once we were old enough, my brother and I got to scrape our own greenware and paint and glaze. But she is the one I think of with the deft hands and the perfectionist eye. My dad and my aunt both inherited their strong artistic tendencies from her, and I think it's pretty clear that it came down to me as well.
(Of course, all this is without getting into the family dynamics that have existed within my memory, let alone before I was born... so many layers upon layers, and I know I never saw even a quarter of the way down. But that's not the part I want to remember right now, or unpeel.)
So the upshot is, it seems I miss her more now than I did before... even though, really, she'd been unavailable (not to say mostly gone) for a while. Which, of course, is exactly the trouble: I never went down there again, because it got to be hard enough for my dad himself to go there, and I didn't like to impose and create more logistical problems by showing up either with or without him.
I wish she could have seen me with my betrothed.
I wish I could have hugged her again before she left for good.
( minimal sociomedical backstory )
It took a couple hours to hit me, but then, suddenly, it actually made me much sadder than losing my first grandmother.
For one thing: I'd seen her a lot less in the past several years than my mother's mother, since I've made it out to CA at least once a year (and even got to take Tiger Boy there last fall), but only got down to FL once since they moved there in, what, 2002.
For another: Secretly, I'd hoped for years that she would outlive my grandfather -- who has always been, and let's leave it at this, a challenging person at best -- and enjoy some peace without him at the end. Naturally, the way her mind was going, it wouldn't have done her any good even if she could have. But it's still sad.
Lastly, as I ended up explaining to TB last night, she's actually the one I take after in certain pervasive ways. Physically: Although I got my mother's height, I am built like the Johnson/Schultz women (my grandmother and my aunt) -- short-waisted, small-breasted, all hips and thighs. Artistically: Both she and my grandfather made things -- he built their house, the one my father grew up in; they had a ceramics studio in the basement, complete with kiln, and once we were old enough, my brother and I got to scrape our own greenware and paint and glaze. But she is the one I think of with the deft hands and the perfectionist eye. My dad and my aunt both inherited their strong artistic tendencies from her, and I think it's pretty clear that it came down to me as well.
(Of course, all this is without getting into the family dynamics that have existed within my memory, let alone before I was born... so many layers upon layers, and I know I never saw even a quarter of the way down. But that's not the part I want to remember right now, or unpeel.)
So the upshot is, it seems I miss her more now than I did before... even though, really, she'd been unavailable (not to say mostly gone) for a while. Which, of course, is exactly the trouble: I never went down there again, because it got to be hard enough for my dad himself to go there, and I didn't like to impose and create more logistical problems by showing up either with or without him.
I wish she could have seen me with my betrothed.
I wish I could have hugged her again before she left for good.