Today would have been my mommom’s 84th birthday, but unfortunately we lost her to breast cancer in February of 2010. While she wasn’t the first person that I have lost, not even the first grandparent, she was the closest person that I have lost, and I miss her every single day.
Today is also Jesse Lacey’s birthday. He turns 33. In case you live under a rock and aren’t aware (or just haven’t been paying attention to this blog), he is the lead singer of my favorite band, Brand New.
Jesse wrote the song Guernica about losing his grandfather to cancer. From everything I have gathered, Jesse was very close to his grandfather and he took the loss hard. Being in your 20s or 30s and losing a grandparent is, in my experience, a harder thing to deal with than losing them when you are still small.
Both of my mom’s parents passed early in my life. I was 8 when my grandmom died and 14 when grandpop passed. I knew what was going on, and knew the gravity of the situation, but I can remember being more sad for my mom than I was for myself. I hadn’t had a whole lot of time to bond with them, especially my grandmom because I was still so small. My younger siblings don’t really even remember her. Losing my grandpop was a bit harder, because at 14 we had quite a good run. I have more memories of time spent with him because he was around for a while longer, and its much easier to remember things that happened at 12 or 13 than 6 or 7. I have just faint memories of my grandmom. I can remember the way she smelled. I remember her red fingernails and the lipstick on the cigarette butts in the ash trays. I remember going to church to hear her sing.
Grandpop and I got to spend a lot of time together. I have a ring on my bureau that he bought for me once when spent the day together for my birthday. It doesn’t fit my finger anymore, and I almost lost it when I was wearing it on a chain around my neck, so now it sits where I can see it, because that’s the only person that really needs to. It means nothing to anyone else.
But losing my mommom last year was such a different experience. My dad’s parents have been around for so long that I was beginning to believe that they had found some secret way to cheat death. But she was starting to slip. Her memory was going due to the Alzheimer’s and I believe fully that the reason that she waited so long to do anything about the cancer that she knew she had was because she didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, and knew that the cancer would take her long before the Alzheimer’s ever would.
In Guernica, Jesse sings about “being half a world away” when he got the call that, presumably, things were going downhill rapidly. In my own life, I was not quite that far away, but I was in Pittsburgh visiting with friends for my birthday. I remember getting snowed in out there and knowing that she didn’t have much longer to go. I was terrified that I wouldn’t make it home in time to say goodbye.
We dug that car out, and I sped back to jersey (getting a speeding ticket along the way. I guess the cop didn’t believe that I was rushing home to see my dying grandmother…I’m betting he’d heard that one before.) I did make it home in time to say goodbye, and was thankful for that.
I feel incredibly blessed to have had 30 years with her, and I cherish every day that I still have with my poppop.
Happy birthday, mommom. I know you are smiling down on us and keeping us safe.
And happy birthday, Jesse.
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