Coming to Terms

So this week is horrible. Last week was also bad. My grandmother holds a very special place in my life and she seems to have taken a permanent turn for the worse. She is in the hospital and as of Monday, is no longer mentally competent. Death and dying seem to bring out the worst in some people and this situation is no exception. There's conflict between her family and her primary caregiver. I’ve thrown my hands up in the air, not because I just don’t care, but because there is literally nothing I can legally, physically, or emotionally do to change anything in this situation and once I accept that, I hope I'm able to calm the hell down and start to process my grief. 

She's still here but she feels lost to me. I feel a little lost myself.

I wish the pain I felt was unambiguous, but it's not. The situation is complicated. There are a lifetime of choices playing out right now, the consequences of which are falling like rain on three generations of our family. I've been acutely aware since I was a small child that the idiom "we reap what we sow" while true, fails to mention that many of us must reap what others have sown, for better or worse. For a lifetime. How different this world would be if our choices and actions only affected ourselves. 

I need to remember that as I go through each day. I need to never, ever forget that. My choices can potentially inflict themselves on those I love years and years into the future. Maybe I should keep a small piece of shrapnel in this wound, and let it heal over where it struck, just so I never forget where it came from. So I don't let complacency or the passage of time distract me from always doing the best I can with what I have. From trying to stay focused on doing the next right thing.

Maybe that will be her legacy.

More coffee now. And some deep breaths. Then a long walk. I'll be fine.

(c) Mommyland Blogs 2013-2015

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