Grandma Coleen

I don’t know how I got drafted into this project, but I’m glad it’s over. At least I think it’s over. My sister-in-law Karen came up with a brilliant (to her) idea for Christmas gifts for Samantha and Claire. She thought it would be nice if they had photo albums with pictures of them and their late Grandma Coleen together. Karen thought it would be a nice keepsake for them.

I was kind of ambivalent about the idea but I wasn’t going to stop her either. Lindsay also thought it would be nice if the girls had a little remembrance like that. But Karen discovered she had one problem putting her little project in motion: she didn’t have many photos of Coleen and the girls. So she asked Lindsay and I for some help with content for her photo albums. Lindsay agreed but when she went to research her archives for shots of her mom and her daughters together, she also found very few to choose from. “You know how Mom was, always taking care of something or getting the food ready. She wasn’t in a lot of my pictures.”

So I spent the better part of this morning going through digital photos to put on Snapfish and send to Lindsay. Normally I wouldn’t mind doing something like this except I had done a similar task a couple of months ago when we were memorializing Coleen. That time I was focusing on photos of Coleen of which I have hundreds. This morning, I was looking for photos of her and the granddaughters. I don’t have hundreds of those but evidently I do have a whole lot more than Karen and Lindsay. I had quite a few on my computer and scanned in some nice prints and ended up with about 50 shots. I hope that’s enough. Me and pictures don’t get always get along these days.

The biggest dagger through my heart, the one that opened the wound that I’ll never be able to close, was the thought of those girls missing out on their Grandma Coleen. And of her missing out on them. That remains the one thing that I am really mad about and that I’ll never forgive. I can learn to live with a lot of unfairness but that is by far the cruelest and unfairest of all. It’s my kryptonite. All through Coleen’s last year when we knew what was coming, I tried not to think of those little girls losing their grandmother. I though about everything else but I blocked that one out as much as I could. That was a concept that was too hard for me to handle so I kept turning away from it. That was the heartbreaker to me. And I know it broke Coleen’s heart, too. I don’t remember her and I talking about the girls losing their Grandma. It was just too unbelievably sad.

Those girls are so sweet. When she was sick and in bed in our living room, they kept asking if Grandma was feeling better and trying to talk to her and play games. One day Coleen and Samantha were at the kitchen table drawing and coloring. Samantha asked Coleen, “Grandma, what’s the matter with your body?” Coleen replied, “I don’t know, Sammie, but coloring makes it feel better.” Samantha seemed to be okay with that answer. I’m glad I wasn’t there for that conversation because it would have been more than I was capable of handling. Coleen told me about it later and she was so touched by Samantha’s honesty and how kids just stay in the moment and ask what they want. One day Lindsay and Samantha had some questions prepared for Coleen and did an Grandma Coleen interview. From that Samantha learned that Coleen’s favorite food to make was shrimp scampi, her best meal was pan-seared scallops at the Hyde Street Bistro in San Fransisco, her favorite vacation was camping at Acadia National Park in Maine, her favorite color was fuchsia, her favorite holiday was 4th of July, her favorite song was “Don’t Dream it’s Over” by Crowded House and her favorite quote was “You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.” Coleen was also asked to describe herself using only two words. They were enthusiastic and positive. Unfortunately in that interview, Coleen got a little too tired to finish and there were a couple of questions unanswered. One of them was “What are you most proud of?’ That answer is so easy even I can answer it. She would have said “Mychildren.”

Coleen loved her family and her kids and her girls. I remember one of the Hospice doctors asking Coleen if she was afraid. “I’m not afraid of dying, but I’m afraid of leaving my family.” I know how perfect of an answer that was. She loved having her family around so she could cook for them and counsel them and love them. Sometimes Samantha or Claire will say something about Grandma Coleen and I love to hear them remembering something about her. Coleen was a wonderful grandmother except she was robbed of her time. The girls won’t have the benefit of her stories and advice. They won’t learn the lessons that she would have taught them about cooking or being positive or studying hard. They will miss her smile and her laugh and her love. Just like the rest of us. In ways I guess it might end up being easier for them because they are so young. But that’s exactly what makes it so hard for me.

This has been the elephant in my room since before Coleen passed away. It’s the subject I wanted to ignore because it was too painful for me to think about and it still is. I swallowed another dose of sorrow this morning looking at photos of Coleen with her beautiful granddaughters. At least I’m trying to swallow, in between the tears. But in a way I’m glad I looked through the photos again. Like before, the hurt gets a little less each time it’s confronted.

Here are a few shots of Grandma Coleen in action. She was always smiling with those girls. I can’t wait to see the photo album gifts from Aunt Karen.

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