Hi guys,
So where to start... news first, then purpose and whatnot later...
On Wednesday night about 11PM, my grandma passed away.
The family didn't find out (at least my immediate family) until about 12:30. The hospital called my aunt and told her, she thought it was a joke (they had woken her from a dead sleep) so she went back to bed. I don't know what woke her, maybe the hospital called her back but she called my mom histerical and told her.
We had been having a good night, we decided to watch a movie and take a break, grandma was supposed to be moved out of ICU and we made plans that when my mom was going to take me to meet with my perspective spiritual director, she was going to take some things to the hospital.
Well, my parents went to the hospital and didn't get back until about 4 or so in the morning and I of course was still awake. They told us a little bit about how she looked and such and then we all crashed. But before we went to bed, my mom told me that she still wanted me to go see my spiritual director. I admit, I appreciated that sense of it felt like the world was on pause but it was ok for me to do what I felt I needed to.
So I dragged or maybe drag/hopped myself out of bed at 9 that morning and got ready to go meet with Roy Cole. He's a retired priest who's been a priest since 1974 and served 10 parishes (churches) in 3 different Dioceses. He was a really nice guy and a lot of fun to talk to. When I sort of off-hand mentioned what had happened the night before he dropped his pen and looked at me and said, "why are you even here right now?" My response was "I'm supposed to be here, I need to be here." By 'supposed to' I don't mean because my Discernment Committee wants me to have a spiritual director, I've been wondering about a lot of things for quite a while and I knew that this would be an experience that would hopefully help me to engage those questions and hopefully begin to figure out the answers. Although, it's funny, some questions wound up causing more questions than answers.
That conversation was everything I was hoping for and more! I literally just shook this man's hand and was learning about who he was and telling him things about myself that I don't share with anybody. Although, I am more open than most people. In-fact, he said, and I'm not surprised by this, that my having the vision impairment that I have has made me to be more open to possibilities and thoughts and experiences than most people. I'm not surprised by those words but I feel awkward saying them, almost as if in some way I'm 'better' than everyone else, I'm Not. All I know about myself is that I don't meet strangers, most conversations can start out about simple things and can turn into amazing conversations. Evidently I have the ability to get people to open up and tell me things that I never expected to hear. I don't know why I get people to do it, but I can.
We talked a little bit about my not feeling qualified to tell anybody anything about God, I guess I had it in my head that you have to have read the bible first. He said that it's more about sharing my story. he said, "You've got a story don't you?... then you're qualified."
In the end, Roy changed from a perspective Spiritual Director to agreeing to be my spiritual director. We're going to meet once a month and I'm going to email him regularly with questions or thoughts on things in the meantimes. I like that idea. It's comforting to have someone that is a person I can turn to for things. It's not like nobody said that I couldn't talk to them, it was more about my having some sort of hang up. I'm not sure what that was all about but I'll admit I've felt a little lost so far in this process. I get the jist of what's going on but dealing with the self-doubt and second-guessing myself was something hard to deal with.
It's also kinda interesting that we talked about how in Pastorial Counseling one of the more-often things discussed is grief during a loss. And since this is my first closely related death that impacts me personally, he's also kind of using it as a teaching tool, or maybe just something to be thinking about. He just encouraged me to pay attention to what's going on as best I can. Keeping in mind how I feel, how I deal with things and how others deal with things. Interestingly, I'm noticing things like when people are arguing about things that really aren't important like where to put the table so we can put grandma's pictures on it, I realized that each person involved in the argument is hurting and things can sometimes come out in weird ways. It's also amazing to see how a family member who's kind of pushed everyone out of their life seems to be bringing themselves closer to the family too. I thought it was a great thing for me to be able to express to the other family members how much this person loved my grandma and how they miss her just-as-much as everyone else does. I'm hoping and praying that this experience can draw the family closer to this person because people have been hurt on both sides and we all need to band together now because we only have each other to depend on.
So I originally started writing at 3 o'clock in the morning because I had a lot on my mind and a certain way I thought this was going to go. I'm sleepy now and I don't really remember what that way was but I'm ok with the way this turned out.
My mom explained to my sister and I what happens at the funeral this morning. I've come to realize that I'm a private person with this grieving thing, but I don't know what's going to happen and at this point I realized that we're all going to be grieving and nobody will be upset with me if I get emotional in public or not. I'm my own person and griev in my own way. It's like what I told my sister, "it's ok to not be ok."
8 or 8:30 comes soon so I'm going to crash. PS: I fixed the problem with not being able to make comments, it was set to subscribers only. Who knew...
Good night all.
Nancy
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