Wednesday, February 20, 2008

92 years ago...

grandmaman et son chien, loup
Ma grandmaman Cosette dans la vingtaine, avec son chien, Loup.

As many of you already know, my grandmaman passed away last July, shortly before I left Japan. Aujourd'hui aurait fit sa fête; elle aurait eu ses 92 ans. Elle me manque toujours.

As you can probably imagine, I was really upset at the time. Devastated. It was a few weeks before I stopped feeling like I'd been punched in the stomach anytime I thought of her. About a week after she passed away, I sat down at work one day (I was leaving in a few days and had nothing to do anyway!) and composed a long, well, tribute, I guess might be the right word. It was a compilation of memories, thoughts, et cetera, about her and her life. I was planning on posting it to my blog. But Murphy's Law kicked in: I'd been so focused on what I was writing (just in a simple Notepad file) that I had neglected to save it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what, inevitably, happened, right as I wrote the last word.

I thought about rewriting it. But it had taken a lot out of me, and the passion and drive just weren't there anymore. I've thought about that text a lot over the past six months or so, and have always decided to not rewrite it. Any attempt to do so would undoubtedly become an attempt to recreate it as faithfully as I can, rather than the simple collection of thoughts and memories that it had originally been.

Anyway ... c'était sa fête, je n'ai pas oublié. J'ai pris quelques moments, parmi la vitesse et les obligations de la journée, de m'en souvenir. Elle me manquera toujours, sans doute, mais j'ai mes souvenirs d'elle, et de plus, j'en ai beaucoup. In the absence of my grandmaman herself, those memories will just have to do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I miss my mother every day. I really thought that she would live to see 100. Sometimes I dream about her.