Hope Floats

I have great writer friends, like Susan who wrote this blog last evening that just popped. "To find peace in loss, to forgive yourself, to hope, to love, to remember...to live. To let go. To say Goodbye..."

On early morning Saturday my grandmother left this world to have breakfast with my grandfather for the first time in close to 30 years (thanks to my cousins for that awesome thought!).

I could not bring myself to go to the hospital. I had went to see her Friday night, held her hand, and she told me "I love you" before I left. That was enough for me. I did not know that I could go and watch another person die in front of my eyes. I did not think that my memory banks could hold that placement, as they still did with Kevin.

With my grandmother, it is sad, but so different. With the elderly, it is something anticipated, even if you cannot quite embrace the fact that they are gone. My sister and I ran into the gentleman who does the embalming for Fred Groff funeral homes on the way home from market. She knows him from working at the local hospital. He was talking about death and how, with the elderly, it's not so bad "but when you see some 28 year old guy come in, that just doesn't make sense." I held my breath. Kevin was just 36. What must have the funeral directors thought when they brought his body in? The body that had been ravaged by cancer, not the body I remember that was so strong...

Susan encouraged me in her blog yesterday, although I doubt she realizes it. "To hope, to love, to remember...to live". I think I lost those first and last parts. I love, I remember, but do I hope? Do I live? Those seemed to have gotten lost in the mix of the upcoming anniversary, the re-diagnosis of my father's cancer, the loss of my grandmother. I miss hope. Kevin used to inspire that in me when he was ill-despite all the signs that said he would die, he never let me dwell on that. It was only that he was alive. There was hope in the fight.

Where's the fight for MY life? For my hope, to let go? For my hope to create a future of happiness without being completely overshadowed by grief and hard times? How do you find your hope?