{"id":5562,"date":"2014-08-05T10:32:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T14:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=5562"},"modified":"2014-08-22T15:01:31","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T19:01:31","slug":"the-missed-good-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/05\/the-missed-good-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"The Missed Good-bye"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life sometimes has a way of hitting you where it really hurts, of saying \u201cHaha, you think you have me figured out?\u00a0 Screw you!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year since I\u2019ve been home.\u00a0 A year since I stepped foot in Colorado, the place I grew up.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t just grow up there, I flourished there, I evolved there, I am who I am because of there.\u00a0 It\u2019s been 12 years since I left that magical place and set out on my own, started my own path.\u00a0 And while I\u2019ve been back time and time again, this is the longest I\u2019ve ever been away.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year since I saw my mountains, hugged my friends, saw my Gran\u2019ma.\u00a0 I am so excited to get back there, back to \u201cmy\u201d place, my childhood, my memories, my home.\u00a0 A year ago Doodle was a tiny little nugget, Honeybun hadn\u2019t even started kindergarten yet and Sugarplum was just emerging from her toddlerhood.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\u00a0We never planned to be away for so long.\u00a0 We desperately wanted to go back to visit for Spring Break but airfare for five was too much and I didn\u2019t want to take Honeybun out of school.\u00a0 Then school ended and we had our show and I had to teach all summer.\u00a0 Finally we got our trip booked and we were all getting excited to go but now it\u2019s all over.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all over.<\/p>\n

I wanted to get back so badly, I wanted to see my Gran\u2019ma.\u00a0 I wanted her to hold and kiss my babies.\u00a0 I wanted her to see Doodle being silly and Sugarplum do her gymnastics tricks and Honeybun read.\u00a0 But we waited to get back because I didn\u2019t know we needed to hurry.<\/p>\n

And now it\u2019s all over.\u00a0 We missed it.\u00a0 She\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

And now I sit here in the dark, alone while my babies sleep, and the rain comes pouring down (what is it with the god-damned rain when people die?!?!) and I just\u2026I can\u2019t.\u00a0 I just can\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n

Our arsenal of great-grandparents has been reduced by \u00be in the past year.\u00a0 This is our 4th<\/sup> loss in 18 months.\u00a0 It\u2019s just so much.\u00a0 And I\u2019m trying to tell myself the same things I told hubby less than a month ago \u201cthere\u2019s nothing you could do.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 You can\u2019t beat yourself up about it.\u201d\u00a0 But I wanted to be there so bad, I wanted to see her again.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want it to end like this.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want this to be it.<\/p>\n

As I sobbed on the phone with my mommy as she calmly gave me the news about her own mother, she told me \u201cShe went peacefully.\u00a0 She wasn\u2019t in pain, she didn\u2019t suffer.\u00a0 We have to remember she\u2019s in a better place and she wouldn\u2019t want you to be upset.\u201d\u00a0 But how can I not be?\u00a0 It\u2019s been a whole year.<\/p>\n

I used to feel resentful towards her when we would speak on the phone and she would well-up as we finished our conversation and would say something like \u201cYou\u2019re all just so far away\u2026\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d laugh and say \u201cI know.\u00a0 But we\u2019ll see you again soon, I love you.\u201d\u00a0 And I did.\u00a0 And I do.\u00a0 And I will. Always.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\u00a0The woman who drove me to ballet classes and helped me learn to drive.\u00a0 The woman who adored her grandchildren and great-grandchildren more than anything in the world.\u00a0 The woman who worked hard her whole life just to get by.\u00a0 The woman who insisted she would make it to a hundred and be on the Today show with Willard Scott (she was 94).\u00a0 The woman who I WON\u2019T see again soon.<\/p>\n

The woman who I missed by just a little bit.\u00a0 The good-bye I didn\u2019t get to say because I didn\u2019t know I was supposed to hurry.<\/p>\n

It almost makes it harder that she went peacefully.\u00a0 At hubby\u2019s grandmother\u2019s services a few weeks ago, a lot of people asked about her and I responded \u201cshe\u2019s doing amazingly well.\u00a0 She hasn\u2019t had any problems in I don\u2019t know how long!\u201d\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know she was going to go.\u00a0 If she had been sick, I would have known to get home, to say good-bye.\u00a0 I would have done ANYTHING to have that chance.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in living in the past or having regrets.\u00a0 I believe in moving forward and learning from your experiences.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t know where to go from here.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what to glean from this experience (which is eerily similar to what we went through with hubby\u2019s Grandma just weeks ago).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all over and I don\u2019t know, I just can\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n

\"wpid-IMG_20140805_102939.jpg\"<\/a>P.S.<\/strong> I wrote the above shortly after getting the news while the kids were napping and I waited for hubby to get home from work (he came home as soon as I asked him too without hesitation). \u00a0When Sugarplum woke up a bit later, I wrapped her in my arms and told her the news. \u00a0She paused a second then asked “can I open my birthday cards now?” \u00a0She had been obsessing all day about two cards we missed opening and was not happy about me making her wait for Daddy. \u00a0Hubby and I laughed at her ignorance to the situation and then I lost it…one of the cards was from my Gran’ma. \u00a0Since moving into an independent living place a few years ago, she has always made cards for my girls. \u00a0We always joke about how she needs to be less stingy with the glue and I’ll admit I threw away a lot of falling apart cards. \u00a0But this card will stay with us forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life sometimes has a way of hitting you where it really hurts, of saying \u201cHaha, you think you have me figured out?\u00a0 Screw you!\u201d It\u2019s been a year since I\u2019ve been home.\u00a0 A year since I stepped foot in Colorado, the place I grew up.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t just grow up there, I flourished there, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[303,243,306,80],"class_list":["post-5562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-ties","tag-family","tag-grandma","tag-loss","tag-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5569,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5562\/revisions\/5569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}