My Grandparents have been at the center of my universe my entire life. I do not have a memory in my life that does not include my Grandparents in some way. My sister and I were lucky enough to have people that loved us unconditionaly. I am not going to say that my parents did not love us the same way, but there is something special in the way my Grandparents loved us. We moved in with them when we were very young, and lived with them until I was 5 years old. We then moved right next door. Literally about 15 steps from my back door to theirs.
I can probably count on both hands the number of days I did not see my Grandparents growing up. My grandma fed us breakfast and got us ready for school. When I was in middle school she drove me to school because, well, I missed the bus quite frequently. My Grandpa worked until I was in 8th grade, but he was always up in the morning to see us off to school. "See ya later girl, go get learned" he would say every day. You see, my Grandpa is from Southern Iowa, which could pratically be Arkansas. He "learned" things to people instead of taught things, he was "fixin" to do things instead of "going to". He was just Grandpa. The man who said Rascall Fratts instead of Rascal Flatts, Tyler Swit instead of Taylor Swift, and Scat Cam instead of Cat Scan. I would hope I didnt learn my English skills from him, but I did learn an awful lot.
A lot of people ask me if it was hard when I lost my Dad, and as bad as it may sound, no, it wasn't. I had the only Dad I really ever knew right beside me the entire time. He told me my Dad died, he held me, and he told me life would be ok. He promised me he would take care of me, and he always did. My Dad was my Grandpa, and I was blessed enough to have two Moms. I had the Mom I lived with, the cool Mom who really had no rules, and then I had the mean Mom, my Grandma. This is the Mom who had rules, and rules better be followed or she wasn't messing around.
There are people who don't understand what I am talking about and I'm not asking them to. This is something that I have to keep. This is something that is in so deep in my heart, no matter what anyone says it cant be broken. I understand these two people are not my real parents, duh, their my grandparents. But these are the people that were there every bad dream I had, every skinned knee I ever got, every broken heart I was handed. These are the people who knew everything about my best friends. Knew my soccer and softball schedule, sat through hot swim meets. Cooked me chicken noodle soup when I was sick, and cleaned up my vomit when I was really sick. These two people mean more to me than anything in the world.
I lost my Grandpa already and am getting close to losing my Grandma. I have always been closer to my Grandpa my whole life. He was my best friend, my buddy. Well, I lost him first, and I have had my Grandma to lean on. Everyone says not to call her, she cant handle it, well...she calls me. We talk about him and laugh and remember all of the funny things that have happened. We keep the memories alive. Now that Im at the point where I could lose her too, I really dont know what I will do. Really dont know.
I am scared to death of living life without both of my Grandparents. My Grandpa was supposed to be there to walk me down the aisle, to give me away to my husband. My Grandma is supposed to be there to tell me how to make gravy for my husband, and for me to call scared to death when I change the first diaper of my babies. These are things we talked about, things we laughed about and imagined. These are things I am never going to get to do, and I am scared. I don't know how to live life without my Grandparents, because they always wanted to live life with us.
