Passages of Life and Death

I can't tell you how many times I've composed things in my head to post on this blog in the last two months. Lying awake at night (or whenever I was sleeping) or pinned under a baby who'd fallen asleep at last or staring out the passenger window watching familiar Californian scenery go by.

A lot has happened to me, to my family, to my friends.

In December, shortly before I got to California, one of my best friends in the world had her first baby. I was coming to stay with them supposedly to help prepare for the baby and to help through the first month or so...since the little girl beat me there I instead was around for her first two months. I've had my hair pulled by teeny tiny fingers, been screamed at till I thought I'd go deaf or mad and had less mentionable things befall me and my dignity. But the moments I'll really remember are the times when she was a little splat fast asleep on my chest or helping her squiggle and squirm her way through attempts at proto-crawling or seeing her get better at meeting my eyes and then finally meeting my eyes and smiling even I was left with the suspicion that gas might have more to do with the smile than me at this stage.

I'm really not sure how two parents alone manage, and I am filled with awe and respect for single parents muddling along on their own. I'm really convinced now that it takes a village to raise a child and at times our unusually large "village" of people at Red House seemed too small to handle the job.

While looking the challenges in the face has to some degree soothed my terrors of motherhood, I find myself, on balance, left with more resolve than ever not to enter into those challenges (and terrors) without a good "village" surrounding me.

Just as I was being exposed to the mystery of new life, a few days after getting to California, I was faced with death as well. My Grandpa, my father's father, died not long after Christmas. I am sorry I didn't get a chance to see him again, very sorry. But I am also immeasurably glad that I was able to go to the funeral. For one thing it was simply important to be with the rest of my family at the time--for me and for them I expect. But the service was beautiful and a good way to say goodbye. And best of all, before, during and after the service people spoke about him, giving me insights into his life I hadn't had before.

I'd always seen my Grandpa as my Grandpa: sometimes gruff, always generous, usually to be found either working away at his extensive garden (once upon a time I used to pick the strawberries for him where they grew up behind bushes in hard to reach places) or else fooling around on his computer (he introduced me to solitaire, real and computerized, to tetris, to more transitory games now long gone). He and my Grandma travelled all over the place and would send me postcards from all over the world.

But people came from all over California and from other states as well to speak at his funeral. And his own kids dug through his stuff and found awards and metals we hadn't been fully aware of. A picture emerged of my Grandpa as a pilot and a hero, flying rescue missions and the like in Vietnam. A story of him flying with a baby on his lap rather than leave it behind because the plane was full of evacuees and there was no more room. A funny story about him telling one of the "damn second leutenants" to sit on his flack jacket rather than wearing it because the sides of the plane were armored and any shooting would come from below and what parts of him were more important for him to keep anyway? Stories from the medal certificates of making three tries at a night landing with no lights, under fire, to evacuate people there. Little stories and big.

It's hard to believe he's gone sometimes. I can picture him so vividly, his laugh, his walk. I can hear the intonations in his voice as he speaks. I've long known that I was very priveledged to have such a wealth of grandparents. I had all four growing up, all four till now, and I even aquired some step-grandparents along the way through the remarriages of both my parents, though they are by and large more distant figures (with the possible exception of Grams who adopted me as a grandkid on sight). I've had a wealth of grandparents. But it's still hard to say goodby to one, perhaps all the more so because I knew him so well. It's definately a price worth paying though.

Grandpa, my most loyal reader, I'll miss you.

Yes, these two months have definately been a time for a lot of emotional upheaval, a lot of thoughts and contemplations. Now I'm back in Britain--I'll skim past the adventures of achieving that. Why I shouldn't be able to post about all this till I'd left again, I'm not sure. Maybe it was just the demands of baby duty; I wasn't online much at all with all the daily demands of life there. But maybe I needed a bit of distance as well before I could distill this to a simple post.