Love Cake

Cold Snowy Day

It lasted only a moment, when we looked outside our window right at the perfect time to admire our first snow flurries of the year right before it all melted. It would have been a magical moment, watching my son's eyes light up in amazement by this nature's frosted grace. He was adorable and very expressive as usual. It would have been a perfect winter morning if only I could join my loved ones in their snow globe joy. Seeing those frail snow flakes drizzling from the sky made me miss home more than ever. Especially since home spent the night at the hospital and was still there all day and we still haven't heard any news from her. My grandmother is my home. She is the main reason I return to Montreal to visit. The white snow flakes, my grandmother's white hair and Montreal's arctic winters; I was homesick. My dear precious grandmother had to be rushed to the emergency room and I feel like I should be there by her side. My grandmother who could be the inspiration of stories such as Peter Pan, who could be the Rimbaldi remedy in Alias (the magic remedy for eternal life and youth). My grandmother who has never been ill for eighty-three years and had more endurance than most of us. My dear grandmother who raised me and whom I could call my mother...She is the symbol of strength and now, her strength will have to be challenged. So is ours.
To view her as just an old person would be a disservice to her. I always despised people being amazed on how she still had a great memory, and that she didn't show symptoms of aging yet. I despised the assumption that being old meant limiting the perception of a person to her age group. She is far more than that. She is a person I respect and know very well, her tastes, her thoughts. She has a strong opinion of the world, strong convictions. Until she shows real signs of aging and health problems, I want people to talk about her like anybody else: as a whole person. No one would say about me that they are amazed I didn't sound loopy yet, or how I still have strength. My grandmother never showed any signs of physical weakness so why bring this up and limit her to the typical old person when we could talk about her great contributions to this world and her legacy.
I know in my heart that she will be fine, that she is a fighter no matter what she has. However, I am now sad that this period I was dreading of her aging taking over her seems to have manifested. I am even sadder when opening up to friends about her, how instead of hearing me out, and meeting me where I am emotionally, how they would talk about her as if she was already gone. Or worse, how they would turn immediately to their own stories on how they lost their grandparents or how normal it is to lose them at some point, as if I wasn't already aware of this inevitability. Focusing on the actual case without projection seems to be a rare virtue...
A pregnant woman does not want to hear about fetal problems, while she is busy nesting and maximizing the most positive energy towards the health of her newborn. I do not want to hear about her being gone when I am hoping that my grandmother would still live another hundred years.