On Friday my husband and I drove out to my home town. It was the day the funeral home had chosen for my Grandmother's burial. I still have such a hard time believing that she is gone. We drove past the pond that Grandma would walk past everyday. Sometimes I used to join her on her hour-long daily walks. Those were great times. Those were time when I learned a lot. She would tell me stories, teach me songs, and listen to me. She would point out plants and tell me about how the sap lines worked that wound through the maple trees along the road. She always had such great stories about her life on the farm where she grew up. And she had an inexhaustable patience for listening to my rambling.



May Day was on Thursday. It is a rather obscure holiday, but to Grandma and I it was special. It was the day that I left flowers on her door step, knocked, and then ran way to hide. She always made a point of exclaiming about the flowers loud enough that I could hear her from my hiding place.



I decided to place some flowers on the grave on Friday in memory of our tradition. But in the end it just felt so empty. Bright flowers that the living woman would have loved, placed on a lifeless grave seemed so wrong. I bought some flowers for my mother and left them on her doorstep since she is the grandmother now. I think that seemed less out of place. A little one will have to take over the role of flower giver. And my mother will have to be the Grandma.



This evening, at work, I suddenly decided to look back at the earliest e-mails saved in my account. I don't delete them often, and I have had the account for years. I think this must be the first time in at least three or four years that I have even thought of looking back at what is saved the first few letters in the inbox. The second e-mail saved on my account is from my Grandpa. Somehow I had forgotten that he had ever e-mailed me. I read over the letter (dated 3-10-02) and several others I found from him. They were long letters full of accounts of the everyday life that used to be normal for them. It was such a treasure to find and to read. Grandpa doesn't even know who I am now most of the time. And Grandma is gone.



I told Grandpa on Friday that Jason and I are expecting. He probably did not remember the news ten minutes later. But he told me that he wished Grandma could have seen it. He told me that she would have loved it because she always loved babies. Oh how I wish the same. I wish I could have told her while she was still here. I wish I could know what she would have said.