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deep south
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Date: 10/24/2005 12:29:29 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2332 times i am going to go to alabama for a few weeks to help my grandparents for a while. i will probably be leaving on thursday, so i have a few days to get my things in order. i was thinking about going for 4-5 weeks (until after thanksgiving), but my mom is suggesting that i only go for two. she visits my grandparents 7-8 times a year, and she says she doesn't think i will be able to handle much longer than two weeks, but that it will still be enough to be helpful.
now, my mom isn't exactly famous for being right very often, but she emphasized that my grandmother's sister is going to come out as well, and that i can always go back again after taking a break at home to get a bit of a rest. so i think i am going to follow her advice.
it is my grandmother who is in the hospital, but i'm actually not terribly worried about her. however, my grandfather is apparently in really bad shape. when my mom told him i was coming, he wasn't sure who i was. now, when i visited them about 16 months ago, he was fine. it took him a moment to recognize me at the airport, but i think that was just his eyesight. aside from that, he had no trouble remembering me, and i asked him lots of questions about his life, and he had long answers for all of them. but i just keep remembering that, when i left, he said i should come back soon. now i am worried that i am too late. i was lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that, on my last visit, he was doing much better than i expected. i wanted to visit again as soon as possible, but it just didn't seem so urgent, and when things got in the way, i didn't make it my first priority. now i feel like such a jerk. i just keep thinking of all the letters i could have sent them, all the visits I could have paid them when they were fully vibrant and present. all the wasted time. i'm trying to focus on the future, but it's hard not to be sad about the past.
my mom said she thinks he's just much worse at the moment because of the stress of my grandmother being away from the house, but i still feel like he has clearly deteriorated a lot since i last visited.
i guess one blessing is that he doesn't remember all of the conflicts that we had when i was younger. i know he felt a lot of guilt about that (he was pretty harsh with me sometimes--i just don't think he was used to anyone disobeying his wishes or talking back to him, so he got a bit carried away when i did--he was a traditional southern military officer, i was a vegan kid who called my parents by their first names--we kind of clashed a bit). i forgave him long, long ago, and i told him so, but that feeling still seemed to be there. if he has lost his memory, at least he has hopefully lost those painful memories.
i recently read something really beautiful in this weekly spiritual column that is published where i live. the writer was talking about the karmic cycle of rebirth, and how important it is to surround beings with love when they are ready to pass on, as that feeling will help guide their next birth. i actually read this a few weeks ago, but i've been really moved by it ever since.
he also wrote about the merciful nature of karma, and how beings were reborn into bodies in which they could best manifest their desires, in order to burn them away. the example he provided was of a human who had lived a life full of lust and aggression. he posited that that person might next be born into the body of a shark, or some other predator, in order to be able to live a life fully centered around those desires--to kill, and eat, and have sex with abandon. as i saw a butterfly the other day (when M. and i went hiking at the staggeringly magnificent tent rocks), i thought that must represent the opposite scenario--a person who had lived a gentle and beautiful life might get to come back as something that harmed nothing--that lived a life in which it manifested only beauty and grace. this isn't a new concept for me, but something about the way it was written in that article really struck a chord with me, and i've been thinking a lot about it since i read it.
one of the other things this article said was that animals would gravitate toward the people who exuded spiritual balance, in preparation for their rebirth as humans. if that is true, than my grandfather is headed for something really special in his next existance. because i have never seen a person with such an incredible impact on animals. they are just drawn to him. it's almost as absurd as the images in a disney princess movie. the last time he came to visit my mom, within minutes of coming into my mom's house, all five of her animals (none of which had met him before) were basically crowded onto his lap. they totally ignored everyone else and just focused on him. it is that way everywhere he goes.
most of all, i take comfort in that article now, because i hope i can be a part of the supportive and loving environment that will usher my grandfather into whatever comes next. it makes me feel that, despite the mistakes i have made in the past, what i do now is meaningful, and that it does count.
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