Blast From The Past

I had a different post in mind when I first hopped on here. But as I was about ready to start making the post I heard something on the TV. Master and I have been watching a lot of Pawn Stars. They were talking about a book that someone's semi-famous grandfather had had in his library and had signed the book.

So I commented that my paternal grandmother (the one I was extremely close to) had signed the inside of most of her books. She had a rather large library. She was an English major and was a school teacher. I then told Master about how pretty her handwriting was. Master said that His grandmother had pretty hand writing as well and still had a letter from her.

That immediately click in my head that I believed I still had a letter from my grandmother as well. I rushed to go check. I hadn't looked at it for a long time so I wanted to make sure I still had it. It would have broken my heart if I hadn't.

Thankfully I found the letter and it's still in really good shape given the fact that I was rather young when I got it.

You see, at the time my grandmother was battling cancer. She wasn't in the hospital at that point. Regardless of the fact that she was on a lot of medication and still battling cancer she was always the teacher. She was teaching my baby brother and I how to write a letter properly. Not e-mail. A regular snail mail letter. She wanted to make sure we knew how a letter should be written.

So she had showed us an example one day while we were at our house and asked us to write her letters and mail them to her when we got home. And we did. We would do anything to make her happy and proud. Hell, she's been gone for some time now and I still hope that I make her proud. I honestly believe that she is looking out for me.

The letter made me emotional. I didn't cry but it got pretty close. She wrote this letter 11 months before she passed away.

For some reason I wanted to post what the letter said. This letter was sent to be on March 13, 1993. (The proper way to write a letter is to include the date.) Please keep in mind she was writing this letter to me when I was 10, so she broke it down so I would understand it.

So here is the letter. (It has my brothers name in it so I'll be replacing his name with the word "Brother".)

Dear Granddaughter,

Thank you for your nice letter. I was really happy to receive it.

The cancers are getting smaller. That's really good news. And, no they haven't spread. That's also good news. Next summer they'll take more x-rays of Grandma's chest to see if the tumors are still shrinking. I sure hope so.

I still have some problems breathing because of the medicine I have to take. But it's getting better. By Easter I should not have to take the medicine any more. Then I should start feeling a lot better. That will be just in time for you and Brother to spend the night out here with us.

I'm glad to know you have so many good friends. I bet they are all very special people. It's fun having good friends you can play with and talk too.

We're also very proud of both you and Brother and how well you are both doing in school. We're glad you both like school so much and are working so hard. Keep up the good work. As long as you try your best that's what is important. Sometimes the work is hard and sometimes it is easy. But you always have to try your best.

I'm glad you had such a good time at your parties. You received a lot of nice presents. Your friends were very nice, and seemed to have a good time.

Please give these pictures to Brother. I forgot to give him the pictures when you were out here for the party.

Love you,

Grandma

Gods I miss that woman. When she wrote that letter my brother and I had just had our birthday party. He was born in January and I was born in March. So when we were younger my parents would just have our birthday parties at the same time. I remember that birthday party. We had it at McDonalds and Grandma was there. Wow was she skinny and pale. My grandmother was a rather plump woman before she got cancer. Seeing her that skinny as a kid (I was 10 years old) scared me very much. As you can probably tell when I wrote my letter to her I asked a lot about her cancer because it scared me.

But she didn't make it to the summer of '94. She didn't make it to Easter either. I know she wasn't lying to me in her letter. She was very hopeful. But shortly after this letter was sent to me her cancer did spread and it spread fast. She was in and out of hospital stays from about May of '93 until the day she passed away, which was February of '94. Her wake was on Valentine's Day.

After that letter I never got to sleep at her house again. When she wasn't in the hospital she was in a hospital bed in her living room on oxygen. She was too weak to walk around or sit upright. When she did come to our place she was in a wheelchair with her oxygen tank. She let us decorate the stand that she wheeled around the oxygen tank in with stickers. She said she wanted us to sleep over but she was so tired all the time and she didn't want us to be bored. We promised we wouldn't be bored but our parents said no, Grandma needs her rest.

The saddest part, to me, about her passing was the fact that she was due to come home two weeks later. She was in remission and the only reason she was still in the hospital was to help her get some strength back. She was in physical therapy when her heart gave out. It had been weakened from all the medication and chemo therapy. She had a massive heart attack and died in the physical therapy room. They weren't able to bring her back. We had made banners, which were already hung up at her house. It must have been extremely hard on my grandfather to take those down. We had plans to pick her up with Grandpa so we had also made signs to show her as she came out to the car. We kept them until about a year later. I was still 10 because my birthday wasn't until March. So it's been 17 years. Seventeen very, very long years. She was my heart. And I hope to see her again one day.