the thickness of life

my grandmother passed away, shed her earthly body like some divine garment.

initially i was shocked, just because there was no real warning, but my aunt nancy and my mom had feeling it was coming soon.

i was on my way to meet my mother so that i could accompany her to the funeral home, where she was meeting with the director to coordinate the obituary and transportation of the body. i started thinking about my body issues, and of my grandmother's body issues.

i eventually considered the role that attraction plays, because if everyone found everyone attractive, then we would have even worse trouble with overpopulation. i had thought of the friends in the past who loved me as a friend, but who had also slept with me. but i was also wrangling with it because i was mourning the "loss" of a friendship i had been enjoying for nearly 4 months. it became clear i was going to have a hard time watching this man, whom i only wanted to know more about, find in someone else what he did not see with me. and in my efforts to change what i can, i decided not to remain in that unrequited position. i don't want to extend that ego pain, when i can put a stop to it now, and begin working now at getting over it.

i wonder what things my grandmother wanted to change about herself. i wonder what the cause of her depression was, and when she started battling anxiety. i can see the sacrifices she made, and the opportunities she had, and the privileges, and the work her life required. but i wonder what things she accepted and what she fought to improve.

since it is still hard to exist as a woman, i can only imagine the challenges inherent in living through the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and so on. my grandmother grew up in arkansas, on a farm, but left her childhood behind, and lived most of her life in a suburb of oklahoma city. that is where most of my young memories of my grandma take place. catching frogs after the rain in the driveway, the way the oklahoma air smelled of a different kind of earth, that red earth. making meals to eat with the family. listening to my grandfather sing while he shears his airdale, raleigh. my grandmother was resigned to a recliner from a certain point in my childhood, maybe by the time i was a teenager. she sat, and only got up to do what she had to. so when her family was there, she let them take care of things. she enjoyed being waited on. and i viewed this as laziness. but the older i got, i came to understand it as a kind of depression, and realized there were too many details about my grandmother's life that i didn't know to draw conclusions about her being lazy. beyond that, i saw in myself the pull toward a sedentary life. it felt like giving up. it felt like defeat. and it became something i wanted to work on changing.

my stubbornness toward taking better care of myself stems mostly from my refusal to conform to what it seems society deems desireable--and i mean more than just in terms of aesthetic.

my grandmother always criticized her own body, but was quick to correct me if i did the same, claiming that my youth was what made me beautiful. but in my mind, my grandmother and i were both bigger women, held back from enjoying more of life for our fear of people judging us based on our appearances.

i don't want to feel excluded because of my body. but i don't want to have to change it to conform, i want to change it because i feel like i don't have the strength to wear it proudly in front of others.

maybe i just need a good skinnydip.

i only know as much about my grandmother and the way she thought as she told me or that i heard from the stories my mother and aunts and cousin shared with me. and i know that it is not always the case that a person has the opportunity to have an adult relationship with a grandparent, let alone all four. i am fortunate to have had a connection to my past in that way.

my pappou is the last grandparent remaining, and i am so sad that i have not had more time with him. but my mom has discussed moving him and ellie up here so that we can visit with them more easily. my uncle is gone much of the time, and doesn't have it in him to do more for them than he already does.

this would be much easier with a computer.

all these thoughts about life and death and the things we experience in between. death puts certain things into perspective, but also makes me feel a sense of urgency that comes from being aware that my end could occur at any time. as we get older, we experience more loss, until we are gone ourselves.

my grandmother's life was so different from mine. and i can see some of the ways i want to emulate her, as well as some of the ways i am working toward being different. if i make it to 95, or even anywhere close to it, i hope that i have as amazing of a story of what i survived, and what i accomplished, and most of all of the lives i have touched.

i want to love freely. and anything that prevents me from doing so ought to be examined to ensure i'm not the one imposing limits.

a friend reminded me that i can't avoid pain. and when i know there is no reason to feel worthless, i have to work just a little bit harder to stop the thoughts that work against me, cascading over every part of my being. i have to get back more easily to center, and to where i feel what i am truly made of. and remember that people who don't see in me the potential i recognize are not suited to be a presence in my life.

and i have to always remember that the sense of connection i feel to the people i love, who love me, is not made any less by the fact that i am single. those relationships are more than valid in terms of my success as a human being.

i was thinking again of how many people had known my grandmother, and of the usually unspoken rule that we do not speak ill of the deceased. there were things about my grandmother i did not love. and when i was younger, first putting together a broader understanding of the world, i struggled with not liking this person i was supposed to love. and even as i got older, i was frustrated i could not break my grandma free from the archaic ways of thinking she had, which for example supported a divisive and sometimes racist, sometimes homophobic perspective. i saw how much my grandmother feared out of ignorance, and saw her religion as a shield that kept her from understanding the most basic fact that we are all human, worthy of love and safety and food and shelter and care and work and education and liesure and joy.