Perchance to Dream

I have dozens of pictures of my
grandmother and I together. Can I find
any of them? Of course not. So, my
granny is on the left and her mother
(who passed away a few years ago) is
on the right. Did I inherit the genes to
have such nice dark hair well into my
70s? I did not. 

I don't know if I ever mentioned this on the blog, but my paternal grandmother passed away two weeks before Chadwick did. Denise & I made a mad dash up to Indiana when the docs said she had less than a week left, only to arrive a few hours too late to see her alive. Of course, we knew when we saw her last September that we were probably saying good-bye, and that this is one of the life choices we made when we decided that a couple states' distance never hurt anybody, but that doesn't make it any easier.

But of course, that loss was overshadowed by the much closer and much less expected loss a couple of weeks later, so much so that I have a hard time remembering that she's gone. When I ordered Mother's Day flowers this year, I was halfway through typing in her address before I remembered that no one was there to receive them. I've lost count of how many times I've thought about calling her, only to realise that hers is one of the phantom numbers in my phone. And, just this week, I've started dreaming about her again.

For years and years, this has been my favourite pic of my
paternal grandparents. My granddad died when I was five
months old. He & I shared a birthday, and I get physically
ill when I think about all the joint birthday parties we missed
out on and all the fun we could have had. So I try not to think
about it a lot. (My dad is the kid on the far left that Grandpa
has such a tight hold on. If you know my dad, you know that
was probably out of necessity.) 

I've started dreaming about Chadwick, too, which has led to a bout of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning. I only see him when I'm sleeping, I can only talk to him then-- or rather, that's the only time he can answer me. And that being the case, why on earth would I ever want to wake up?

I'm not really surprised I'd start dreaming about Grandma and Chadwick at about the same time, considering how close together their deaths were. My grandmother and I don't really talk in my dreams; she's just there, the same presence she's been all my life. The reality that I'll never again open my mailbox and find one of her letters is starting to settle over me. Even into her 80s, she had beautiful handwriting, the kind that's so pretty it's almost unreadable. :) Even into her 80s, she wrote long letters full of the kind of insider information about various family members that none of them would ever tell me themselves. Now my only news source is what they're willing to tell me on Facebook.

No dreams can bring back what we've lost.