She Was My Person.

A non-corporate post today.

Twenty one years ago — I lost “my person”. My Gram. Twenty one years and her spirit still sits with me, her memories fill my minds eye, and her presence is everywhere.

A feeling woke me this morning, not a dog or an alarm, or light…a presence. I moved through the first hours of my day and each routine felt off, there was a fog of melancholy that rolled in and settled. Memories of my Gram were everywhere — as I moved through a city she had never visited.

Mid day a magnetic force pulled me upstairs to a bottom drawer and a lined notebook I have not opened many times in the last two decades. There it was, 21 years ago I was with her in a Calgary hospital….writing, feeling my hand in hers, cooling her brow with a cold cloth, greeting the constant parade of loving nurses and friends checking in on us as she prepared to leave, watching the snow she never loved fall outside her window.

Today I reread that note-book while the tears streamed down my face… I decided it was time to share a few of those thoughts to honor her memory, and to celebrate how lucky I was to have been so well loved.

In a life if you are lucky there is one person who loves you enough to make all the difference. She was that person for me. I was well loved and her love changed the course of my life — and the lives of everyone I would or will ever meet.

April 1996 — As she lingered much longer than expected, including seven days after any food had passed her lips she kept teaching me. We laughed that week about some of the lessons … a direct plan on how to return to the church and a reminder that you should make enough money to pay people to do the things you were not good at and for both of us that meant always having enough money for a cleaning lady and a perfect manicure! On the last day in one of her last moments of lucidity I wrote…”We decided patience was today’s lesson.”

I still struggle with this virtue and smiled as I read the words — recounting a conversation a couple of months ago when someone asked me my greatest fault and this was the one I shared.

In a hospital room, walls covered with her favorite photos, bedside table with her books, I marvelled as I looked at her …”she is still so beautiful — her skin, her eyes, her smile, that crown of red hair.”… I would break into tears in the days ahead when someone would tell me how much I looked like her or looked like “Bunny”, as she was know as a young woman or “Aunt Milly” as she was known by 100s of former teenagers who adopted her as theirs when she was the “cool” Sunday School Teacher of that age group.

From my book…“Who is this woman who remembers every nurse by name and holds each of them dear for a special tenderness or kindness they once gave? By definition, she is good nature, she is happiness, she is love. She is about learning and teaching and making beautiful things. Her laughter is contagious and can’t be stopped. She loves fine things but plays this down — never wanting someone particularly my Grandfather to think she wanted more than she had.”

Each time she would wake she squeezed my hand and even when she didn’t have the energy to speak, her eyes would smile and pass me love…”she is trying to top me up with enough love and wisdom and courage to propel me forward when she is gone.” She has told me I am ready to go on without her — she has left enough love around me but she knows that for the first time I am doubting her. “

As the clock turns to the next day she slips away, her spirit staying with me I make one final note before I stand up to leave the room and tell the nurse, and call her children. It was our shared destiny to be together alone at this time.

“Oh Gram, how you were loved. How you will be remembered.” And the notebook was complete.

I adored her — and I felt loved and adored by her. I respected her, and she beamed with pride at my accomplishments. We taught each other — but she was the better teacher.

Less than a year after she was gone I would become a parent. I would aspire to have my kids feel half of the love for me that I felt for her. Someone would tell me that would not be possible — and alas I believe they may be right.

As the clock ticks toward April 10th — I feel sad, but it will pass. Tomorrow I will think about the fun we would have had this week — deciding what to wear on Easter Sunday — hats, earrings, shoes, matching purse…I come by these loves honestly. I will focus on how incredibly fortunate I was that she was my person. How incredibly well loved I was.