Another Loss

Mourning During the Early Morning Hours

On Monday morning my maternal grandmother passed away. Another branch pruned from my family tree. Another loss etched into my emotional calendar. A double dose of grieving.

I don’t know if her mind knew the significance of the date, but her heart must have indeed. For twelve years later — to the day — mother followed daughter in dying.

Both left life in the morning. Both in homes and neither in their own. How eerie, how cyclical, how jarring, that mother and daughter should die on the same day, though many years apart. A day of loss upon loss. A day of regretting and remembering: A call I sooner should have made. “Phone Grandma C.” on my to-do list for over a week. A call I tried to place for three days, each attempt met only with ringing. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t home. No one told me, but she’d been moved to someone else’s house.

Then came Monday’s call from Grandma F. explaining what had happened. She isn’t there or here now. Her lifeline has been disconnected. “Call Grandma C.,” an imperative I will never again accomplish. My monthly reminders to phone her have been deleted with grave gravity. My only connection to her now, a network of memories.

Another missed opportunity: speaking to her one more time, adding another I love you exchange to the mountainous pile. These are the sorts of regrets that sharpen grief’s teeth in the face of death.