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This week: I Love You Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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I love you. Three simple words that have a lot of meaning when they're spoken from the heart. And yet, sometimes they can be difficult to say.
This week's Spiritual Newsletter is about love and loss.
kittiara |
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There's this saying that "you don't know what you've got until it's gone". Now, I've never taken my relationship with my grandmother for granted. I've always appreciated it, and I have always appreciated her. However, I didn't anticipate the pain I would feel when communication between us ended.
It all started last year. I'd just discovered this option that would allow me to call abroad for 600 minutes each month, at a cost of only a few pounds on top of my usual phone package. It was a good deal, and I felt that it would be wonderful to spend more time with my family members, especially those who do not have the Internet. Telephone communication is not the same as seeing them in person, but it's certainly better than nothing!
I was especially looking forward to more chats with my grandmother. When I still lived in the Netherlands, she was right around the corner from me and I'd visit her several times a week. I loved her company. Sometimes we'd talk, sometimes we'd watch television together, or sometimes we'd do our own thing in companionable silence. We could be quiet together, without it being awkward. I always felt at home with her.
She didn't want me to leave for the UK. I think she was scared that I'd end up in trouble. I also knew she would miss me, a lot, just like I'd miss her. Sometimes, though, we have to do things in life that are difficult, and it was difficult to move so far away from her.
My grandmother helped raise me the first years of my life. When my mom fell pregnant with me and unexpectedly faced life as a single mother, my grandmother was there. It was tough - we weren't exactly well off - but between them they managed to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. When I grew too big for my cot, I shared a bed with my grandmother. And with my grandmother's cat, who hated me during the day for being a crawling menace who was too intrigued by her tail for her liking, but during the night she would settle between us - a truce that lasted through the hours of darkness.
My love for the written word was a gift from my mother and grandmother. They both spent hours reading stories to me, and they encouraged me to become an avid reader. They also nurtured my creative attempts, and both still have some of my very first "works of art" and my very first "novels".
I remember my grandmother as a hardworking, intelligent woman, with a good sense of humour despite all the blows she'd been dealt along the way. Unfortunately, those blows did age her prematurely, and she was relatively young when she retreated from the world, spending most of her time indoors, in front of the television or watching the world go buy from her seat by the window.
She had a couple of strokes a few years ago, and she was too fearful to go out, even with her walker. Then, at the end of last year, her health deteriorated and she ended up in the hospital. Instead of my anticipated chats with her, I had to rely on updates through my mother, who was running back and forth between hospital appointments for herself and visits to the hospital where my gran was.
The decision had to be made that she could no longer stay at home. My grandmother could no longer look after herself. She was given a temporary placement at a home for the elderly to see if she would recover, especially from the confusion that had set in during her hospital stay.
At first, she did improve. The first time I had her on the phone she hardly seemed to know who I was, but things started to look up. She was settling in, taking a greater interest in her appearance than she had a long while, and she was making new friends. She was making progress with the walker and even took a couple of steps without support.
And then she fell, and broke her hip, and she ended up in the hospital all over again. The confusion once more took over... and she hasn't been the same since. She doesn't have a telephone anymore. Sometimes she recognizes my mother, but at other times she confuses family members for one of the nurses at the care home. She is stuck in a world of her own, and the only bright side to it is that at first that world seemed very dark, as she was scared and panicked all the time, but now it appears to be a happier place.
I don't know where people go when dementia gets a hold of them. They're still the same people, of course, and there are moments of greater clarity, but from the outside it seems that they are stuck in a dream world most of the time.
My great-uncle, who recently passed away, suffered with dementia during the last years of his life. He was convinced that my auntie ruled the care home he lived in. In a way, that made him happy, as he felt she was still around even though she'd passed away some years before.
Dementia frightens me. The idea that your mind can take you away from reality just like that is a terrifying one. Then again, the nature of reality can be questioned. Is reality only what we perceive it to be?
All I know right now is that I miss my grandmother. She is alive, and yet I feel a loss, as unfair and strange as that might be. I can't call her. I can write to her - and I do send cards - but she cannot write back. I can't afford to go over and visit her.
And - and this might again be unfair and even come over as bad - in a way I prefer to remember her as the woman I used to know. The lady who sang so beautifully in the Salvation Army choir. The woman who pretended she was done with cats after my old, nighttime friend passed away, but who secretly fed the stray cats outside of her apartment building. The family member who, after I messed up badly in life, was the one person who stood by me and promised she'd never, ever turn her back on me. And she never did.
I hope she knows that I love her. I used to end every phone call with those words. I love you. I just wish that I could tell her that again, and that she'd actually know who said those words to her. For now, I'll just have to write them down.
kittiara
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The Spiritual Newsletter Team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in! 
Fi  - Thank you so much for highlighting my 'Seaside Musings' in this Newsletter! I really appreciate it.
~ Kasia
Most welcome! I always love highlighting good items .
~~~
kamiley99 - I think everything you've put into this letter is so uplifting! It shows me to be more involved in my writing as a Christian! I hope to become a regular visitor to this site to express my love for God.
Thank you so very much for your kind words! I appreciate it. And I hope that you will stop by regularly!
~~~
monty31802 - A fine newsletter and a big thanks for the highlighted item.
Thank you very much, and you're most welcome!
~~~
Zeke  - Of course there are cases when we should fear a culture that wants to eliminate us.
Zeke
But how do we know that they do? Through the media? Sure, there are some definite examples in history, but on the whole, people just want to get on with their lives, no matter where they are from.
~~~
overthere - I liked this piece. I do have friends from all over the english speaking world. Television is garbage, or as my father told me once, "drugs for dummies."
Haha, I like that saying. I admit to watching some shows, but not often. I do feel so much that we're fed through the television is dumbed down!
~~~
shree  - nice concept but little bit boring while comparising the events ina haphahazard amnner.
Sorry to hear that my previous newsletter wasn't really to your taste. Hope you'll enjoy other editions better!
~~~
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Spiritual Newsletter Team:
SophyBells  , KimChi , kittiara
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Spiritual: February 29, 2012 Issue [#4906]
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