Independence Day...

It was brought to my attention this past Saturday that the fourth of July is in just under a week. This came as a bit of a shock to me, as I stopped paying a whole lot of attention to the date on the calendar last year. I know that that only means that these things will sneak up on me, but that is, for some reason, just something I do. I do this to myself constantly and then wonder why things hit me so hard. It's almost like I enjoy the pain these things cause me. The fourth of  July is only significant because of the death of my grandmother last year. She passed away from complications due to cancer and a liver disease. Her death has been hard for all of us. It felt like she was literally there one minute and gone the next. This past year has been a year from hell. It seems like I've been crying at the drop of a hat on an almost daily basis. Just random things will make me think of Grandma, and that's something that's been almost too hard to deal with. And now I have a little girl who is starting to talk and can recognize who people are and is asking about her Gigi. All I can really tell her is that her Gigi is with Jesus and we'll see her when the time comes. How can I explain to a 16-month-old about heaven?...

The fact that the baby remembers someone who passed away before she could really get to know her just blows me away. I wonder every day when the questions will actually start about her Gigi. Right now it's just pointing and saying "Gigi", but I know eventually it'll be questions about what she was like and how she passed away. That's the thing I'm really scared about. I don't know how to explain how sick she was and how, if she hadn't gotten cancer, the time would've come when Gigi wouldn't have known who Jeannie was--or any of the rest of us, for that matter.

Maybe I'm just being silly. I'm fretting over something that I can't control and that I can't avoid. I'll answer any questions that come as well as I can, and help her to understand just how much Gigi loved her and how happy she was to have a chance to meet her first-born great-grandbaby.

I guess this gives me a whole new meaning for "Independence Day", doesn't it?

:'-)