Loss.

I'm in Pennsylvania right now. For those who don't know, my grandmother passed away unexpectedly on Thursday evening. She had broken her leg and had to have surgery to repair it, but they had to go in and do something on her heart first. Her body just gave out, and her spirit went home. Although thinking about it, I'm not sure (in retrospect, obviously) that she would have been able to handle the 6-8 hour surgery for her leg. That's pretty tough on the body and everything. Needless to say, my family is in shock. First Nathan got sick (although he's doing better and the chemo is doing what it's supposed to do!!!), then my grandfather had some life-change stuff (don't really think I'm supposed to write about it here, just has to reorganize his life a bit, basically), and now my grandmother dies. Seriously-this kind of thing only happens in novels and in movies. When my mom called to tell me, it really felt unreal. In a way it still does. I'm staying in her house with my dad (mom is with Nathan in IA and Erin has to work) and there are just all of these reminders that she did not expect to enter that hospital and not come back. For example, her clothes for when she got home are laid out on the chair in her room. Her mail is in the backseat of her car, as if she just grabbed it and stuck it there to check it later. There's a book half-read on the coffee table. The fish are swimming lazily in their tank. The freezer is full of various foodstuffs that she bought. It's just so...weird. Surreal, really. When my Fluffy died (my mom's mom) I was 10, and didn't really notice those sorts of things. Not to mention that she was at the Barn (the country house) when she died, and we were in the house on High Street for the funeral. But now that I'm going through this kind of loss as an adult, it's seriously a completely different experience. It is a different experience, but one would think there are similarities. Maybe there will be Yoohoo at the funeral home (at my great-grandmother and grandmother's funerals in BG, we drank a lot of Yoohoo at the funeral home. So now Yoohoo always makes me think of death, and therefore I can't drink it). Gorgeous Ma will definitely be missed. I have a card by my bed in CT thanking me for the engagement photo I sent her, and it said the date was already on the calendar for next year. And I know she was really looking forward to my ordination, and that was something I really wanted her to see--graduations didn't matter so much to me, it's the ordination that I thought would be best for her to be at. But now she'll be seeing it from a different perspective. Oh well. At least she'll be present in some sense! I'm preaching the homily at the funeral. I asked Carol, the vicar, if I could. I feel like it would be a way to honor her, and to honor her excitement and joy about my vocation. Now I just have to write it...