I'm confident that nobody who reads this will know who Peggy Heaton is. That's fine. I don't care. I'm not writing this post for you. I'm writing this post as a way to channel my grief over my grandmother.
I haven't ever lost anyone close to me before. Sure, I've had a few other family members die, but I didn't really know them. Jim Heaton died when I was 3. But this time things are different. This time I was close, and I can truly say "dearly departed". I loved my grandmother, and I lived with her most of this past summer, as I had my first real job.
I don't know why she died. I don't know how. I don't even know exactly when the funeral is going to be, yet, though I think it's scheduled for Wednesday. She was only in her 70s, and fit for her age, and very healthy. She would go to Curves most days after work. She never retired, because she enjoyed her job. She traveled the world on her vacations. She laughed and smiled every day.
This post is extremely difficult to write. I've already broken down in tears twice...
She was a CPA, and gladly helped my family with taxes. Such an intelligent woman. She was one of the reasons I enrolled at Rice University - she and her husband started a legacy there that I continue, and she was close to the campus, if I ever had problems. She drove me to and from the airport when I went home for the holidays, once even picking me up long after she would have normally been asleep.
I've got childhood memories of going down to her ranch; petting the emus, watching the deer, feeding the cattle and javelinas, riding on the front seats of the jeeps with my sister as my father nearly drives us into a cactus patch. I remember getting my boots stuck in mud on the lake, I remember stocking it with fish. I remember those warm Texas summer evenings when we'd go out and have an old-fashioned barbecue, cooking the potatoes on hot coals in a pit. I remember the barn owl, and the rattlesnake that caused such a commotion as Peggy tried to find the combination for the gun safe so that my father could shoot it - and the diamondback so large that it blocked the jeep's passage along the dirt road.
And the lake house, where I first learned to ski, and where I learned to watch out for water moccasins and snapping turtles. Where I lazed about in a hammock all day listening to the birds or sat in the sunshine on the widow's walk.
And as I reflect on the beautiful times I spent with my grandmother, I mourn the times I can no longer have. The last I saw of her was when I sheltered with her from Hurricane Ike, and then I left her to get back to my apartment as soon as I could. Even though it didn't really mean anything, and I doubt she took any offense at all, I'll probably berate myself for it for the rest of my life. In my mind: The last time my grandmother saw me, it was a rude dismissal of her company during the storm, in the vain hope that my apartment had electricity and I could get back to my internet connection and games.
I never even had the chance to ask if she would go on a cruise with me. It's always been something I've wanted to do, and she's the only person in my family that would have done it with me (either because they would consider it frivolous spending, or because they're too tall to fit in cruise ship beds comfortably). I doubt I'll ever go, now. All I'll be able to think of is "this should have been with her."
And I swear, if anyone at the funeral says "It was her time to die", I'll punch them.
