This year saw the death of two people in my family who were very important to me. One death was my Uncle at the end of August but didn't really hit as real until the beginning of November. The other was only two days ago and was my paternal Grandma.
The combined grief led to me having to "reboot" as I call it where I stayed in bed for pretty much an entire day. I didn't have any studying that I had to do and we managed to obtain help for Charlie and I had a guilt free day of just coming to terms with my grief. The grief for both them are forever going to be tied together not just because of the timeline but because of what they both meant to me.
You see I was the weird child in a weird family. My family loved me (I never doubted that) but I often felt like no one really listened to me. As an adult I get it, I have a very creative and chatty 6 year old myself and I know that at some point in the rambling constant stories you check out and just let the noise wash over you. I get it, especially when you're busy...but at 6 I didn't get it. I just felt like no one really listened to me.
I was also quiet in a really bizarre way. I could be loud and obnoxious (I was the youngest child after all) but I kept secrets that perhaps I shouldn't have and again I didn't understand why no one could see I was hurting or lonely or sad even though I wouldn't tell them I felt any of those things.
Goddamnit. I really made things harder for myself as a kid.
ANYWAY.
To top it off I didn't really feel like I fit in with my family in my home town. Oh in some ways I totally did but in many others I felt I didn't. It was like I was running at a similar wavelength but not quite the same. It was difficult for me.
Uncle Renn and Grandma Betty though were my mental anchors. They both made me feel like they really listened to me and really saw me. I felt I was more in tune with them then with a lot of the rest of my family. They made me feel like I belonged when I felt I didn't even belong to my family. They made me a place to be weird and unusual and eccentric even by my families standards and they made me feel like I was okay the way I was.
I always felt like they had my back which as a lonely child was so important.
I would like to stress again here that my family did love me and try to support me as best they could and I made it damned difficult for them to do so, so I am not condemning them. It's bit related to the fact that I didn't have a lot of friends because I made it very difficult to be my friend. Same deal, I made it very difficult for my family to understand me.
Renn made me feel valued and important.
My memories of him mostly revolve around family gatherings where he would talk to me like an adult and listen to my answers. He took me to the ocean on a short holiday when I was a teenager and that was brilliant, he took my sister and me to the fourth of July celebrations in the park where we embarrassed my sister by dancing and where I got to move around the gun of a tank (it was awesome.) I remember him making me laugh and just generally being kind and making me feel valued.
Grandma made me feel like no matter what she was in my corner fighting for me. I'm sure she took us out places when we visited her for a few weeks every summer but that's not what I remember. I remember sitting in her kitchen eating pancakes, playing in the back yard. I remember going to the grocery store with her or sitting in her living room watching terrible movies we got out of Blockbuster and making fun of them. (Hey sis remember that awful fantasy movie with the floating head that said Ciao a lot?) I remember telling her a story where every other line was "and the peasants rejoiced!" said with a dance. I remember telling her how dad told us about him and his siblings climbing a bridge near her house and her calling up all her children to yell at them. I remember always getting letters from her and her encouraging my writing by talking to me as a fellow writer. Of her eccentricities which were so like mine. Everyone said me and Grandma Betty were very similar and we were. She gave me my first dragon statue (which is the only one I brought with me to England) she knew me when I didn't know myself.
This year I lost the two people who saw me and heard me clearly when I was growing up despite the amount of effort that took. (Seriously looking back on it and seeing it in my own kid I clearly thought everyone was psychic...maybe that's because I was 8 before I stopped believing everyone was secretly a fictional character in a book being read by person who might close the book and make us all disappear and who could only be stopped from closing the book if I turned the page every night... Jesus Christ I'm crazy.)
I'm sad and I'm going to have weeping fits and I think I'm going to find next autumn very difficult. But...I'm going to to do my best to remember my Uncle and Grandma the way they would want me to: by following their example of kindness and maybe stop tuning out my kids hundredth very involved story about FooFoo land and really listen to and see the people around me. Because everyone deserves to feel valued and important.
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