January 24th already. Can it be that we've been here for almost a year already? Hard to imagine. It is gray, gray, gray and cloudy, alternating between rain and snow every other day. The worst. The gray weather doesn't do much for my mid-January mood. I have been reflecting today on loss. It's not in my basic nature to be moody, but today seems the perfect day for it. 2011 alone brought a lot of loss in my life. Starting with these two.
These were our babies. Boomer, my big black lab. A perfect prince of a dog. I suppose everyone says that, but he in fact was a prince. The little one is Poppy, a little girl who never did a thing wrong in her entire short life. (Boomer did lots of unruly stuff early on in his life, but we always forgave him for it.) A freak series of unrelated events happened. Poppy got very sick with an apparently incurable wasting disease. She also had a torn cruciate ligament which we were going to have fixed, but she was too ill to withstand the surgery. At the same time, in a romp with another dog, Boomer tore his ACL and his meniscus ligaments in the same knee. Born with OCD (osteo-chondroitin dessicans) he never had good joints to begin with and had had a lifetime of pain relievers and laser treatments and discomfort in his joints. So one day, one terrible day, they left us together. They had been together since they were puppies, so perhaps it was meant to be. At least I had the comfort of knowing they were together. Boomer was only 8, Poppy only 7.
Then my daughter and her husband moved away to Boston and took their daughter, my grand-daughter, with them. I was there when she was born. We had taken care of her since she was born and we were used to seeing her at least twice a week. And I often saw my daughter despite her busy schedule. I missed them in an ache that didn't go away.
Want to know a hard part about growing older? You have to completely readjust how you interact, even how you love, your grown children. In their thirties now, my children are married and each have a child of their own. For me, grand-mother-hood is this completely bi-polar experience of utter joy and then lonliness. And loss. They come, they smile, they hold your hand, you giggle together, plan fairy gardens for summer, and then just when you are at your happiest -- they go back home. It takes your breath away. At least it takes my breath away.
Want to know another hard thing about growing older? When you put make-up on in the mirror, you tend to put it on in sections. Just a left eye. Just an upper lip. "Not so bad for 60," you think, glancing at yourself in sections. But then when you see yourself in photographs, and there is the whole face, you think, "My God, who IS that wrinkly, old woman?" Loss of skin suppleness.
Some other losses in the past year as well. But I won't dwell on them here. As I write, Cricket is asleep on the back of the couch where she can keep close watch on me. She brings smiles on this otherwise gray day.
