12/24/15

Did that really just happen?!?

At my last visit with Grace we talked briefly about my upcoming visit with my grandparents. I told her I never know which version of them am I going to get? Will I get open Grandma who wants to talk and confide in me? Or defensive Grandma who's main goal is to defend grandpa and make excuses for him? Will I get nice grandpa or mean grandpa? I've learned over the years to just roll with the punches. I get whatever version that I get. Sometimes I'd day I even end up with neutral grandma.

So far this trip has been neutral. One of our Christmas traditions is me helping her make white chocolate popcorn, even though I hate the stuff. We were getting ready to start and her aunt called. She went and talked to her aunt, I waited a while and then decided to start without her.

Once she was off the phone she came over and told me, "Sorry, I had to talk to my aunt. Her son died this year and she has no one else to talk to. Sometimes we don't talk about those thing enough, like we did with you girls and your mom's death. It was just too hard. I felt like I was going to cry all the time and I couldn't raise you while crying."

My jaw about hit the floor. It's been 24 years, twenty four... and this is the first time we have talked about my mom's death since the year it happened.

I don't remember what I said, if much at all. We continued talking about her aunt and the struggle she is going through.

When that conversation died down I asked her, "I told you I was going to counseling for the depression, didn't I?" She said yes and asked how it was going. "Good. We actually just finished. We realized that my depression gets worse this time of year." Her response again floored me, "That must be because your mom died this time of year." I told her, yes that is what we figured out.

I really can't believe we just talked about that. I actually LOVE when that happens. It's nice to be able to open up to her and talk to her about things that are never discussed. Oh and she flat out told me grandpa is still drinking!!!! Guess it's not that big of a secret if she is willing to tell me out of the blue.

As we were getting ready to leave Grandma told me, "I am glad we got to talk. We should talk like that more often. Maybe if we talked about these things neither of us would need counseling." Grandpa kind of ruined the moment by coming over and saying, "Yeah, we should talk more too!"