shaver

My grandmother is dying.

I had all manner of things on my mind, and plans to update this diary with some backlogged stuff, but last week I found out that Nana’s cancer was beyond treatment, and I’ve been off-balance ever since. Organizing things like Steph’s next-day trip back from Milan and our visit to Kitchener helped focus me a bit, but my head hasn’t really been in the game at work.

Visiting Nana helped, and I’m glad we made the trip. She’s very sick, and very tired, and very weak, but she also seems to be at peace with the fact that she’s dying — to the point that she was making jokes about great-grandchildren; I had no idea what to say to that, at the time.

I wish I were more at peace about it. Nana and I were never extremely close, in no small part because I was a pretty mixed-up kid for much of my youth and that complicated my relationship with my family. I wish I’d been able to get to know her better — that’s a copout; I was able, and I wish I’d done it.

When Steph and I headed up to Kitchener on Friday — Steph fresh from a 9-hour flight back home — we got to see quite a few of our relatives, and it was nice to be around them. Weird not having Nana there, though, and very hard to see my Papa with a broken heart.

I never know what to say.

I wish Nana were going to be able to hold her great-grandchildren. I guess all I can do now is make sure that they know about her, even if she’ll never know them.

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Tyla and Steph and I drove up to Markham on Sunday to visit with Dad and Lisa and the girls. Yes, drove. Hilary is travelling this week, and she left her car with us for parking and our use. Quite nice of her, and we’ve been taking advantage of it to return beer bottles and visit family, mostly because it’s an opportunity for me to get some more road time. Driving automatics is weird.

Visiting with the Markhamites was nice, as it always is, and it made me wish I got up there more often, as it always does. We invited them down for a Father’s Day dinner, which would happen to fall on the last day of our move-window. Tyla thinks that might be a problem, but I’m very much looking forward to having my sisters around for some of the unpacking chores.

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This fantastic news brightened my day, and it was really in need of brightening.