My grandmother, whom I previously mentioned here, passed away three weeks ago.
I have tried, as much as possible, to maintain this web presence as my public/Writer face. I established this blog and website to discuss theatre, and plug my own work. WORK, which indeed involves me. It’s not a place to very publicly whinge about my private life.
Which is why I haven’t blogged recently. My life, and those of everyone in my family, have been consumed by very personal loss. Even if I could have written about it sooner, it’s not only my loss to talk about.
And, I simply have no idea what to say about it, even now. It was long – she first became ill in 2005 – and it was slow, for her to go through, and for us to see.
It’d be easy to say she was my grandma – everybody has grandparents, and when they’re gone it’s a hole in your existence. Perhaps, unfortunately – like me with my mom – you didn’t have your grandparents very long, or you didn’t know them at all. Nonetheless, because of them, you’re here. However, if you did know know your grandparents, and don’t have them anymore…then that’s not enough to explain the hole.
I could say factual things: the house of my grandma and grandpa – who died in 2002 – was where my sisters, brother, and I went for EVERY vacation while growing up. They literally supported me while I went to university. My grandma let me crash with her again when I came back from Scotland. None of that explains it either.
The best I can come up with is that my grandma was one of my anchors…in the good sense. I almost always hear of anchors as a negative metaphor, holding someone down. Well, if you want the ship to move, and you can’t weigh anchor, then yes. But of course the anchor is also what keeps the ship from floating away randomly.
Without my grandma…practically all of my anchors are gone. She was the major reason I came back to Edmonton in 2008. So… do I just bob around now? Or steer myself somewhere and build a new anchor for myself? I’ve already answered that – and to end cryptically, that’s where my WRITING comes back in…and I’ll talk about that later.