Shutting a door

Yesterday I had a meeting with the lawyer that wil be handling Grandma's estate. He was very pleasant man and our relatively short meeting went well. The main thing was for me to hand over the keys to Grandma's apartment.

He asked me if I was sure. I said I was, that I was prepared to do this. So when we left, he locked Grandma's door.

I'm not going back.

I will never be able to go back.

It hurts more than I realized it would. I got home, and thought about it, and started to bawl out loud. It's OK to hurt, though. It's part of the grieving process, it's a necessary "milestone". At some point I would have had to give up the key, the access to Grandma's home, so it may as well be now.

The door is shut and all that has been for so many years is shut with it.

Comments

SolSionnach said…
{{{Hug for Keera}}}

I'd never realized that there would come a time to just lock a door that you've gone through so many times before, for the last time.

How sad.

I remember bawling out loud when I got the urn of my beloved first poodle's ashes. The finality of it all.

My heart goes out to you, Keera
Anonymous said…
When I was just finishing up high school, my grandparents died within the same year -- one very suddenly, the other after a bit of a decline. Their estate was settled, the house sold and all of a sudden, I no longer had a connection to the home on that street -- or even to anything on that side of town. Before I went off to college, I'd sometimes drive by, wanting to just go sit in the grass, or something, anything to fill that space in my heart that was empty. I worried that those wonderful people -- who gave me unconditional love, shelter from the storm, cocoa and toast on Saturday mornings -- would fade too quickly from my memory. Where could I go when I wanted to be with them anymore?

The answer came, as I'm sure you've discovered. I didn't have to go to a place. They found me. In the years since, I've discovered so many triggers -- smells, especially -- that remind me of them, and make me feel close. I am comforted like a little girl, still, by what my grandparents were for me, and will be forever and always.

Alice
Keera Ann Fox said…
Thanks, you two. I'm still missing having that key. And I hope Grandma and Grandpa find me. Right now, I'm feeling rather orphaned.
Anonymous said…
I don't remember how long it took before I started to feel the comfortable connection to them again, and, of course, I had the major life change of starting college to distract me from the loss (and I'm not sure if that made the process faster or slower). I'm sure it was quite gradual and subtle. I do remember that during my freshman year, I lost the gold cross necklace my grandmother had given me a few years before when I was having surgery, and I was absolutely devastated that it was gone -- so it must have been a year or more before I started to feel comfortable with the new, non-temporal nature of our relationship...

{{hug}} I know you don't have to be told to give yourself time and to be patient...

What else is going on in your life these days? You've lost your cat and your grandmother in a short span of time. Is anything starting to shift, expand or be added, to fill in those spaces in your life?

--Alice
Keera Ann Fox said…
Funny thing is, I do need to be told to be patient. I think one reason I crashed (see new blog post) is that I thought I was done, but I'm not. There are going to be new hurts along the way, which isnormal; I just forget.

I can relate to the feeling you had about losing the connection - and the gold cross. I inherited a cookie jar shaped like a rabbit on a cabbage head, and the rabbit broke off. I was nearly devastated; it seemed so ominous.

Reading your experience is helpful and cheering. Thank you, Alice.

And no, nothing's shifting yet. That's all right. I need to get past the grief first.
Anonymous said…
I did read your post (I'm glad they all found you), and it sounds like you're going alright. It'd be nice to be able to skip over the pain/lonesomeness, but that's part of the healing.

It would appear that the objects give us something to cling to and then the loss of them comes at the time when we're realizing that objects are unnecessary.

Losing your cat, grandmother, and possibly your interest in charts could be opening you up to something big. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I hope your weekend's journey has been a good one.

--Alice

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