My pussy must have ate it...

Its strange the things we think of when our world begins to change, when we start out to change. The people around us do, or don't and life moves forward, we move forward, or we don't. It's strange. Life. It always ends the same way. We eventually, inevitably die. What people remember of us is how we lived and what they know of how we lived. These things are important. These things make a lasting difference in not only our lives but others too. Life and death have lessons. Lessons no one can teach you in school, things people can't buy with all the money in the world. Life is hard and downright dreary at times, but we live for the good moments. If we are really fortunate we have a person or two that teaches us not to take it too seriously. I have a habit of viewing things in a very black and white manner. It doesn't always serve me well, but i'm consistent about it, so is life. We live we die and the rest is truly details, details we have trillions of opportunities to rise or fail in. Surviving is tough but there are people in every life, every group, who truly live. Who enjoy the adventures and roller coasters that life presents. That's the kind of person I'm striving to be even in my bitchiest moments. That's a large part of who I want to be and who I am.

Eight days ago I left the gym after work, went home, took a shower and drove 30 minutes to go see a shell. I say shell because that was all that remained of the funny, bright, lighthearted and raunchy as fuck, woman I remember. I had resisted going to see her these last few months because I didn't want to remember her as the scared, lost person that old age and Alzheimer's had left. It wasn't until speaking to a really good friend and even then mulling it over that I managed to get over myself long enough to drive up there and see her. On the ride up I thought about what I wished I could ask her. What I wished I could ask all of the dead people in my life. Who did you want to be? Did you get to be her? Once I got there all I could do was just repeat in my head what my friend had said to me "You don't have to remember her like this", She was peaceful, but she wasn't the same woman who had thrown me in the pool, or tortured us with cicada shells on her finger. The crazy fun one who rode the roller coasters, told dirty jokes (even to children) and laughed like laughter was life itself, She was already gone. There was her body, there was breathing but she was long gone. I saw my grandfather be, human and real, my mother, a bit extra crazy with grief and a whole lot of weird, But I didn't see any of the light that was my Grammy. I made the right choice in going up there when I did and I'm glad I got to see my grandfather in that light and some day, I'm sure it will be appropriate to laugh a little about how my mother Sister Gloria'd me with pictures of New Orleans and asked me if I wanted some of my Grammy's hair, (because vikings or some shit like that.) Shortly after I left, so did my Grammy and I have no regrets thanks to one really smart and underpaid guy up north (someone must be paying some of these friends for them to stick around this long.), but I'll never know the answer to my question. Did she get to be who she wanted to be? Did she live the life she had hoped for?

Of all the people over the last ten years who have dropped out of this life and moved on to whatever comes next. I think maybe she's the only one who might have actually done that. It's kind of amazing that anyone could and even a little ridiculous when I think of all the shit I don't know about her or most of my family really, but I think she did. I think she lived through the bad shit, through hard times and sad ones and somehow she had fun whenever and wherever she could, I think that bitch really, fuckin, lived. If that's not what life is about then we're just not doing it right. Water Skiing, Sky diving, speeding over a bump in the road, throwing kids in a pool, dressing up as Miss Piggy for your birthday, getting a tattoo at 60 something, making faces, setting lobsters loose, letting us peel her sunburn and do her hair, sitting on the beach, having fun. That was Grammy. That was one fun Broad.

People will come and go from our lives for many different reasons, but the shit they teach us, the shit that molds us and provokes us to move forward, good or bad, these are the seeds they leave behind. You can grow stuff and make a life, You can let fear stop you, or you can jump right the fuck in and go. I don't remember learning how to swim but I know we didn't take one of those baby survival classes, I imagine my Grammy, (but possibly my mother,) tossed me in the pool, laughing. and obviously we didn't drown. Appalling as that may be to some, it was one of the best lessons she could have taught me, that and never smell a cupcake... There are all kinds of people and all kinds of ways to live, some are shitty, some are good and some are just plain fun. I hope that when I go ~ like a rockstar ~ I hope that I can be remembered as the fun one... My give a damn about anything or anyone that's not fun or enjoying their life is kinda like the mouse my Grammy used to tell us about, but could never find when she tried to show us. She'd ask us if we'd seen her mouse, she'd look for it on her leg and then when she couldn't find it she would look up and tell us her pussy must have ate it! Take from that what you will but it was years before I got it and once I did it was even funnier that this raunchy grandma would tell it to a bunch of kids, not giving a shit that we didn't get it cause some day we would and either way it was funny to her. That is how I will remember my Grammy.

~ Goodnight Irene.