A few weeks ago I had the strangest feeling that I was missing something. Something I should remember, but couldn't. Tonight I realized what it is and why I didn't. Two days shy of three weeks ago was my first date and also the anniversary of my great-grandmother Pauline's death. I'm already tearing up, okay. In for a penny, in for a pound. I hate saying that I was distracted, but in the best way. I know that that's what she would've wanted. She couldn't have stood for any of us being sad. Not when there's so much in the world to love and be happy about. Not when we already have so many wonderful memories from a life with her. September 7th, I was on a date and I think I've met someone that I can see some kind of future with. I future that I wish grandma Pauline could be there for, even though I know she is in some way.
I wasn't religious in any sense of the word until she died. It was then that I reasoned that there had to be something. Some governing force in this life because surely she ended up someplace wonderful. Some place that she deserved. Some place free from the hardships of life. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and while I miss her every day I know that the fact that she isn't here anymore gives her life all the more meaning. That's why mortality exists. What would anything that we do mean if we just kept on living? I remember in my Mythology class over the summer that the gods were said to be extremely jealous of humans because our mortality gives our lives meaning, while they waste away, hundreds of years passing in the blink of an eye. This means that it had to happen, which I can accept. It doesn't always ease the pain, but I'm thankful that I have someone that I can feel so much for even though I only knew her for such a short period of time.
I'm afraid to go back to Telephone. I want to so badly, but it scares me. I haven't been there in so long and I remember the absence, the void permeating everything. The physical location was all there, but its heart was gone. Things have changed even more now, but I want to be there anyways. To recapture something from all those years ago. Look at me, I'm talking like I'm a hundred years old.
One thing I've always known is that whoever I end up spending my life with has to know about this woman that impacted so much of my life. They need to see where I spent my summers picking blackberries and chasing cats and walking between great grandmothers. They need to see where I ran through and jumped from monstrous rows of hay bales with one of the largest dogs I've ever seen. Where my cousins, siblings and I spent countless hours swinging in a dangerously old tire swing hanging from a frayed rope and ate from a wall of jarred pickles between the bathroom and the kitchen. The old deep freezer where the pinnacle of youth, the Fudgesicle lay. The tattered Go-Fish cards and room where we played Spoons so viciously it's surprising we're all still here. That doll in the highchair in the dining room that always scared the crap out of me in the night. The adventures with Joe in the Gator and drinking Dr. Pepper and eating tuna-salad sandwiches while watching Alien and Zorro. The worn and ancient-seeming Big Bee Cemetery. The rickety, paint-chipped swing on the patio at grandmother Mary's house and oh goodness the ticks. They scared me to no end and almost every animal was covered in them. The numerous cats we adoringly named, among them Dipstick with the differently colored eyes and Old Sarge the orange and eventually three legged cat. I can still hear grandma Pauline calling "Kit-kit-kitties!" when feeding time came around and the large silver trash can in which she kept the food. She always had the food scraps on top of the washer and drier to mix in with the cat food. And how she would always ward off any form of attitude with "Now don't be fresh." That broken, old piano we would smash on as children with the glittering white castle and the heavy, black metal iron. Grandma Pauline's jewelry box with so many trinkets that I could fill an afternoon just asking where they came from. Gosh, I remember one Christmas I got it into my head that I would get grandmother Pauline and grandmother Mary christmas presents and I just found things of mine and loaded up two boxes for them. I gave Grandma Pauline this Beanie Baby named Seaweed who was an otter. She kept that thing above her bed for as long as I can remember until she went to the hospital. She kept that dumb stuffed animal just because I gave it to her. That's the woman that they need to know about. The childhood they need to see. The one that holds such a big place in my heart.
It's been four years, but it still feels like yesterday. I still can't think about Grandma Pauline without getting tears in my eyes. I don't think that things like that ever get any easier with the passing of time. There will always be that vacancy in the world and the memories that were left to balance it. I need to go back and be overwhelmed, to live everything again and remind myself even more. I need to take all of those feelings and memories and that strength they grant along with me wherever I go. It is those that we love and who love us that give our lives meaning. The people whose hearts we touch and ours that are touched in return. Grandma Pauline, I love you and I miss you. I miss you so much that it hurts and I always will. I always will.
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