Will she really be lost to us when she dies? I’m not talking about life after death, but my relationship with her. All my life, if I was lucky, I saw her once a year. Her influence wasn’t so weak as to only be there when we were together. It lived in memory, in letters I still keep, and in her uncanny ability to know when I needed something. Our understanding of one another grew as she revealed her generous nature. She pampered me in childhood, encouraged me as a teen, and mentored me as a young woman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wisdom in books and recipes and exchanged notes carried us through the turning point when I could be a help to her. She trusted me to write her story, to help her during an illness, and I sat with her as we drove away from her home for the last time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now she withdraws from us, settling into the idea of rest. My hope is that in death she’ll be restored to us more than she is now when I visit her, shrunken and white on her bed. I rouse her sometimes to say goodbye, but lately, I feel strength to let her rest, trusting that the quality of our relationship doesn’t depend upon a goodbye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Will she really be lost to us when she dies? I’m not talking about life after death, but my relationship with her. All my life, if I was lucky, I saw her once a year. Her influence wasn’t so weak as to only be there when we were together. It lived in memory, in letters … Continue reading Grandma<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,40,20,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extended-family","category-family-time","category-hope","category-life-according-to-angela","category-temple-and-family-history-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19481"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25150,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19481\/revisions\/25150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}