No One Gets Out Alive

My sister has done her own blog about grief, sorrow, losing someone close to you. I just read it, and it brought a burning lump into my throat and nasty, stinging tears into my eyes. But it doesn't bring me any closer to really grappling with it myself, or writing anything emotional (as opposed to matter-of-fact), or really even acknowledging it.

Our grandmother, our Mawga is not well. It's been a long time since I gave up on the idea of her getting better, the pain in her knees going away, of a miraculous recovery restoring her to her former, more energetic, mobile self. At 80-something, you just don't get better. I accept that. But what I haven't accepted, what I don't really like to think about, is her getting worse.

But my Mawga, my grandmother, my first friend in life, is getting worse.

When I was still very, very young--six, seven, eight, nine, ten--I would get very scared of Mawga dying, especially in her sleep. Before falling asleep at night, I would say to her "See you in the morning!" and wait for her to say yes, she would, as if somehow, this mundane exchange would make it true. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep at night, thinking about Mawga not being there. Sometimes, I would have dreams where she had died, and in my dreams, I would sense the finality, the hollowness of a world with no Mawga.

If, at six, I could know that Mawga would be in my life for many, many years, I imagine my anxieties and premature grief would have been assauged. If I had known that I would have spent so many of those years growing away from Mawga, taking her for granted, and generally just being a shitty granddaughter, I imagine--I hope--that I probably would have wept with shame.

Mawga's not gone yet. She's very sick, I think, and a part of me--a tiny, little-girl part of me--is scared. The majority of me is detached, operating on an intellectual level, perhaps just acknowledging that none of us get out alive, but not yet feeling how that affects me.
I'll be going home this coming weekend to spend a tiny, tiny period of time with my grandparents, because every effing second must count, every second that I can spend with them should be the best moment I ever have. And I want as many as them as possible.