Letting Go

(Although I intend to finish this story...the last year with Jim, the divorce and the forgiveness I am called to do, right now I am working on peeling back the layers of pain that I have held onto for far too long....which include Jim but also others..these layers that have built a wall of "protection" that God desires to tare down in me. I want to share this journey with you....)

Today we went to see Nana at the nursing home. I saw a frail woman with vacant eyes seeming so small in her bed. Loneliness hung in the air like a heavy fog. Her spark was gone. She was real quiet. She spoke in whispers. Sometimes she seemed in a haze. As I looked at her a wave of compassion engulfed me and swept me back in time.....

I could see back to a few months ago when she would try so hard to get herself out of bed, to a few years ago when she would struggle to make herself something to eat, several years ago when she was at her house in NH and struggled with her walker to get around, 15 years ago when she was doing child care for a neighbor, 20 years ago when she walked to the store. I flashed threw the years and saw her slow decent into helplessness.

Nana was a harsh woman and through the years she made it clear she didn't want me around. She made me feel like an inconvenience, someone that got in the way of her and Mom's relationship. For years I have struggled with the memory of her cruel words but watching her today they melted away. I saw her life, not just my pain.

I saw a toddler that lost her mother at age 2. I saw a little girl that was bounced around from family member to family member all her childhood. I saw a woman that married an alcoholic, womanizing man who she could not count on. I saw a woman who had her children taken away from her and felt so helpless she didn't fight to get them back. I saw a woman who buried 2 infants and an 11 year old daughter. I saw a woman who buried 2 husbands. I saw a fiesty independant woman reduced to the shell of a body.

I saw a woman who never felt loved and therefore could never show love.

And I was overwhelmed with grief.

Grief for that little girl that lost her mother, that never felt like anyone wanted her, that married a man who didn't treat her right, that lost her kids, that buried her kids, that buried the loves of her life, that is trapped in endless days of nothingness.

Before we left, I gave her a kiss and told her I loved her and that she was a great grandmother. And I meant it for the first time in my life.