A Passing. A Renewal

My grandmother passed away on Saturday.

She was my mother’s adoptive parent.  My mother, about five years before she died, was forced to bury her birth mother.

My mother had a touchy relationship with her parents.  Abuse, neglect, disinterest, followed by adoption.  Rebellion, defiance, then marriage at 18.  My mother was never one for half measures.

My grandmother and I shared a complex relationship.  It was… cordial.  Friendly without being close, polite without being enthusiastic.  It felt less like we were family, and more that we were close acquaintances.  I barely knew anything about her life.  She rarely shared, and I was too young to be curious about such things prior to her moving to Phoenix.

It has taken me a few days to sort through my feelings on her passing.  On the one hand, my wife and I have plans to go out to Phoenix in the next few years to escape winters and allergens.  Building a deeper relationship with her, now that my mother is gone, was something I looked forward to.

That’s not possible now, and I realize now what it is that I am feeling.  It’s not grief, nor despair.  It’s a quiet sense of frustration mixed with regret.  She wasn’t an old woman.  Maybe late 60’s?  Early 70’s?  I should’ve had years.  But as with my mother, my grandfather, and my other grandmother closer to home, later is now never.  I’ll never get to ask her all the burning questions I have about my mother when she was young.

I yearn for knowledge of my mother’s life.  To know more about who she was as a person, not just as my mother.  I am frustrated because all of those avenues are closing.  My father is ailing, my mother’s father is already gone, her father is in Phoenix as well, which may as well be the Moon.  I have no more individuals who knew my mother when she was young.  All of her older friends are gone, the others a constant feature whom I have already spent a lifetime swapping stories with.

I regret that it is only now, after the worst has happened, that I am seeking out this knowledge.

It was only a few years, but I should’ve known it was all I would ever have.

I will waste no more of the time left to me.  It is far too precious to spend it so lightly.