Sept.9/12

Good Morning,
   How is everyone doing this morning? For those of you who follow my blog, you are probably surprised to see a new post so quickly after my last one. Well, I always try to blog here when something goes down that I can share with you, Joe Public. If you're a lady, then you are Joelene Public. lol. Anyways, as some of you might have seen via my Facebook status updates, I did have something go down that I felt was worth blogging about. My Grandma Metcalfe just passed away on Friday evening around 8:30pm. Something that I have been writing about and talking about for a few months here has finally taken place. Someone that I know has passed away since I developed this anxiety disorder. So how am I feeling about this??
   Well, I must admit that I have some mixed emotions about it. I am saddened of course that this happened, but I am also a little indifferent about it as well. To give you a little backround on this situation, I have to go back before I was even a thought in my Dad's mind. My Dad grew up in a terrible home with a father who did not treat him well in ANY way. When my Dad was old enough to get out of the house, he left. About 5 years later, he met my Mom and a few years after that, I came around. My Dad never had any sort of good relationship with his Dad/my Grandpa and for that matter, never a very good relationship with his Mother and Sisters.
   This has or had continued all these years and is still going on today. Some members of my Dad's side of the family have always had disdain or anger or hatred or whatever towards my family, including my Mom, my sister and me. We don't really associate with them and they with us. So needless to say, this has affected my relationship with that side of my family also as I am and will always be loyal to my Mom and Dad. I will always take their side and stand up for them. Don't get me wrong, I am not sitting here typing without blame or innocence. I am not saying that I or we have never done anything wrong. We could have been the bigger person MANY times and picked up the phone, etc. But neither have they.
   So the point of telling you all that, is to explain my sadness and my indifference to this situation. Do I regret not getting to spend a lot of time with my Grandma? Of course I do. Do I miss our conversations about CFL and NFL football? Of course I do. Do I regret not getting to tease my Grandma about different things? Of course. There are many things that I will miss about her. Even though I did not spend a whole lot time around her in the last 3 or 4 years, I still loved her very much. If you read my blogs here or know me, you should know that I am a very compassionate person with a lot of love in my heart. I may not necessarily like the way that someone treats me or the way that they treat someone close to me, but I still love them.
   There are family members in my life on my side and Krystle's side that I definately do not like right now, but if they called in the middle of the night with a problem, that would be put aside and I would get my ass in gear to help them out. Why? Because I still love them and that is just who I am. So I must admit that I have had some issues liking my Grandma for the last few years, but I still really loved her. She taught me a few really cool things. We talked about music, football, hockey and sports in general. She had terrible knees and a broken down body as I do, that we had in common. And she was still my Grandma. I know that she loved me and that she was a great lady to me. I was not around when all the things went down with my Dad, so it really has nothing to do with me. She was always good to me.
   I think that my indifference to the whole thing is that we weren't or haven't been that close for the last few years. It is actually quite easy to not feel a TON of pain right now. I have laid awake the last few nights thinking about this and that. Could I have done things differently or could I have been the bigger person many a day and just went with it? Should I have done that? Maybe, maybe not. Because I am only 39 or have a belly or work with the rigs, should I not deserve some respect also? Should we always have to like people whether or not they give us the respect that we deserve? Krystle's Opa gives me the utmost respect and I give it right back to him. Just because you are older than me, does not mean that I do not deserve your respect, right? Even if you think that I am wrong on that one, I don't care because it is how I feel and my opinion.
   And I guess that this is where the topsy turvy feelings come into play over this. I DO have some regrets and I DO wish that things had been different. But it is not ALL on my shoulders. It should be equally split. The crappy thing is that I am still alive and having to deal with these feeling and thoughts, she is not. So where do I stand on this? Well, I think the bottom line is that I have lost someone that was in my life. They may not have been as close to me as say Doug or my cousin, Chantel. But they were still in my life and I was still "associated" with them. She was the matriarch of this family whether or not you had a relationship with her or liked her. And she was still my Grandma. See that's the funny thing about life. We might hate our parents or our sibling. We might hate our cousins, aunts or uncles or grandparents. But, guess what? They are still and will always be your family. You can change your name, get a facelift, move to Timbuktu and denounce everything that you know; those people will still be your family. They still bore you, raised you, played with you, watched over you, prayed with you, blessed you, took you to school, took you to sports practices and wiped your butt...that will never change.
   My heart is tore up a little bit. I will be attending the funeral with or without any other family members from my immediate clan. I will be walking in there with my head held high and my heart in the right place. I will be respectful and not try to start anything (please believe me that there is a TON more to this story that I am not sharing here). I will be there to represent my family if no one will. And I will miss my Grandma. Weird eh? You don't spend a lot of time with someone in the last while and when they're gone, they're gone. I have two songs playing over and over in my mind since learning that she passed away and both are from two totally different spectrum's of music. One line is from an old 80's hair band, Cinderella. That line is "Don't know what ya got, till its gone". The other is from Garth Brooks, who I hope needs no introduction. That line is "if tomorrow never comes".
   I don't think I really need to explain or digress any more on either of those lines; they should both be pretty self explanitory. Anyways, this blogging thing is always some "therapy" for me and I wanted to use this medium to get a few things off of my chest that I was and am feeling. I don't think that my feelings are going to go away any time soon. I don't think that tomorrow morning I am going to wake up and everything will be better. I will continue to question myself as to whether I did the right thing in regards to my relationship with my Grandma. I will continue to question myself as whether or not I did the wrong thing in regards to my relationship with my Grandma. Will those questions ever be answered? I'm sure that eventually I will come to some sort of peace over this. I am sure that eventually I will not feel any remorse or regret over the way some things were handled. I am sure that in time, there will only be really good memories and no painful ones.
   I also feel that with this being "new" to me with the anxiety disorder, it too shall pass in time. One of the really funny things about having this anxiety disorder, is that I get to question anything and everything. Analyzing it over and over, questioning everything and asking all the what if questions. So where do I go from here? How do I even end this blog today? To both of those questions I can honestly say that, I have no idea. This is new territory that I am in. I think that in a bit of time, these questions will answer themselves. Until then, I just have to deal with this and move on with life.