It's been nearly six years since we've spoken to each other. I suppose your passing away has something to do with that. You never believed in life after death anyway. However, my imagination has led me to feel your presence occasionally. You'd probably agree that it was just my imagination, but I know you'd be really pleased that I felt like you were here.
If you're angry with me about your final days, well, you should just put that behind you. I know you always said you wanted someone to end it for you before you ended up helpless and vulnerable in a nursing home. But you should have expected that my sister and I would have been selfish enough to want to keep you, to hold on to hope that you could return to even something close to who you really were.
Besides, what point is holding a grudge against us? It's only a matter of time before we join you in the afterlife, wherever you are, if there is indeed such a thing. And should that come to pass, we expect to have a beer with you and to celebrate being together again. (Is there beer where you are?)
So do you know what's been happening with your family since you've been gone? Do they give you some sort of peephole from the other world so you can keep tabs on us?
If so, then you know that you have a granddaughter. Yep, somehow or other, my husband's little swimmer found some old remaining egg in this old body. I had her just about 9 months after you passed away. People suggest that perhaps my daughter IS you.
Sometimes I think this might be true. She has many of your traits.
- She has wavy brown hair and brown eyes.
- She's a total ham! She loves to sing, tell jokes, get up on stage, and so on. Oh sure, people say "All kids like to do that." Not true. MY child likes to do it even more than other children, and guess what - MY child does it better.
- She frequently has "Oh, piss on it!" moments. She doesn't have much patience with things that don't work, processes that fail, and so on. She'll probably parallel park just like you did - one chance and if the car doesn't slide in the first time, to hell with that, let's park somewhere else.
- She's beautiful, just like you.
- She's opinionated, just like you.
- She's brilliant, just like you.
Sometimes we have stare-downs, to see who laughs first, just like you and I did. So far, I always win, but she's getting better. I don't recall ever winning that game with you!
Oh god, would you ever love her! And you know, she knows about you, too. She refers to you as "Grandma Joyce." She asks questions about what Grandma Joyce looks like, what Grandma Joyce did, and so on.
She knows the story about you & your brothers letting Pet Pig into the kitchen. I think I told her the skating story once, but she didn't understand it. She'll understand it in a few years. I'll tell her again.
She's in kindergarten now, Mom, and you would be amazed at this school. It's the school that both you and I should have gone to when we were children. However, the school didn't exist back then, and of course, it's in a completely different country than the one you & I grew up in.
At this school, children don't sit at desks. They get to move around, work on their projects collaboratively, sit in groups for storytime or for particular lessons. Nobody would snatch away a drawing away from a child the way some idiot teacher did to you, and nobody would disrespect or humiliate a child the way some of my teachers got off on doing when I was in grade school.
It's a school that genuinely respects and feeds curious little minds.
Anyway, all this is just to tell you that you have a wonderful, intelligent, humorous, beautiful, and engaging granddaughter now.
Do you also know that we moved to Calgary? I wish you could see it. Maybe you can. It's a booming city. It seems every day, some building we're used to seeing is torn down and a new one put into its place. They're not much for history here, unfortunately. But it does have sites that you'd find extremely interesting, such as the Glenbow Museum, Heritage Park, and other such places.
There are a lot of other changes in the family - lots of new babies, an engagement, houses being built, new jobs, and so on.
So, if you do have this peephole into the world, you probably know that your mother passed away in 2004. Ninety three years old is a respectable age. Nevertheless, she knew she was dying, and she didn't want to. And frankly, we didn't want her to either.
Perhaps she's there with you now. Tell her that I made a batch of no-bake chocolate cookies a few weeks ago. I didn't have instant oatmeal on hand, so I used slow-cook oatmeal. Tell her it didn't work. But I ate the cookies anyway.
Mom, I still get fleeting nanosecond notions that I should pick up the phone and call you because it seems like it's been awhile, and then, almost the same moment, I remember that I can't. Those are hard moments.
Mom, I love you, and I miss you every single day.
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