Bittersweet Mother's Day

I love holidays. My whole family loves holidays...but man, holiday spirits in this family have taken a serious wallop these last couple of years.

Mother's Day in 2019 was the last holiday that both my grandparents lived to celebrate. After that, they were both put in a care facility (most definitely not by choice, and not without a good fight), and we were obliged to clean out the house and sell it.

Grandpa died on Father's Day that same year, and Grandma followed him on the Fourth of July.

My own dad died mere weeks before Father's Day as well as my own birthday.

This year, we made sure to visit Grandma's grave (at least they have a nice headstone in a nice, grassy, shady spot), and then we wanted to drive by their old neighborhood and take another look at the old house.

But when we got there, there was no old house to look at anymore.

Everything was gone, including most of the trees and shrubs.

All that was left was a bunch of dirt, rocks, a few scanty patches of grass, a mountain of discarded branches, and a good number of tire tracks in the dirt.

You can imagine the shock this was to all of us, especially my mom, since that was her childhood home. She had lived there since she was three years old, and even after she found her own life, there was no shortage of visits over the years, and not just on holidays.

The house was as familiar and safe as any I had ever known. Flashbacks kept playing in front of my eyes all day long, and even now, I'm still seeing parts of that house, that backyard, and all that other stuff. I can even see the old doghouses they kept in one corner of their yard, ages after they stopped keeping dogs.

Of course, there was nothing we could have done either way. The house was no longer our legal property, and according to Mom, it was quite the fixer-upper; there was a lot of work to do with the wiring and plumbing and such, and maybe they figured any further maintenance would have cost more than it was worth. It would have been safer as well as cheaper to simply start over from scratch.

I suspect the house may have also sustained some damage from that earthquake we experienced a couple of months ago, since it was much closer to the epicenter than we were.

Whatever the situation, whatever their reasons for total demolishing, I'm sure their reasons were perfectly valid.

And without Grandma and Grandpa living there anymore, the house was nothing more than an empty shell anyway.

Still, that was something none of us were prepared to see with our own eyes, least of all today, of all days.

 

(Images property of Animation Screencaps)

At least we got to keep some of the things that used to be in that house; we have some of Grandma and Grandpa's old furniture and we even used their special dishes for tonight's dinner.

And we still tried to make the most of today. We got Mom some really nice stuff that she loved, and my sister brought all the grandkids over.

Another thing that makes Grandma and Grandpa's passing more bearable is knowing they're together again; they were only separated from each other for a short time, and I really hope Dad's interacting with them now. Contrary to how most in-laws are depicted, Dad fit into Mom's side of the family seamlessly. He got along especially well with Grandpa since he'd lost his own dad as a teenager; I remember how they would tease each other, always in a good-natured fashion, and on the few occasions when Dad couldn't join us, Grandpa always sent us home with a batch of his famous gingersnap cookies, which Dad could never resist.

I'm sure they were just as shocked and devastated as we were when Dad died, and now that they've also passed away, I tell them now and then, "Tell Dad hi for me," or, "Give Dad a hug for me."