Grandma Edna

I lost my last grandparent this week.

Edna Bush was 97. A remarkable age, and a remarkable woman. Right up to the end she had all her faculties and was still puttering around. She was surrounded by loved ones and passed peacefully in her sleep.

As a writer I normally have lots to say about just about any subject, regardless of whether or not anyone wants to listen. Not so now. In the past decade and a half I’ve lost a number of people I’ve been close to.

I lost my one grandpa before I could remember him, but all the others have passed away since I’ve lived in England back in 2005. I’ve lost three uncles in different ways, two of them while I lived in BC, one of them despite donating my liver to try and save him.

Part of me feels drained.  I would call her every month or so to catch her up on my life and, of course, now that she’s gone, I feel like I didn’t call her nearly enough.  And then I realized that many of my regrets centred on myself. I wish I had called her more. I wish I had gone out to see her again. I wished I had published an adventure novel set in England in time so she could have read it (she was very excited about it). But it all feels like it’s more about me than her.

So I don’t really want to go into any of those things. It feels very personal right now, something I should just let be and absorb it in my own time. I suspect my feelings will come out in other ways, perhaps through my work, but for now I just don’t want to talk about it.

But I do want to put the focus back where it belongs, by sharing the story of how Grandma and Grandpa first met, in their own words.