A New Kind Of Grief
Before this pandemic, I had considered myself very lucky, I never knew what it was like to grieve for someone I lost.
My great grandmother aka GG, lived in Florida, we rarely got to see her, she was 88, she suffered from early onset dementia which progressed into Alzheimer’s. Slowly but surely she was forgetting the people around her. My GG was one of my favorite people in the world, she was one of the few family members on my mom’s side that we kept in contact with. My mom and her family had a rocky history. My GG was a feisty Italian woman who always talked with her hands and never cared who she would have to argue with to get her way. She had more artistic talent in one pinky than most of my family did combined. I was lucky enough to have some of her talent, all though I was never as good or will be as good as she was.
The last time I saw my GG was around 8 or 9 years ago for Easter, we got to spend all day together and of course we got pizza, because neither her nor my mom enjoyed cooking. We played poker with pennies for hours, that was the last time I got to see her. We were planning a vacation to see her during summer of 2020, but because of Covid it was canceled and I was told I would have to wait another year to see her.
Unfortunately another year never came for her, she was in assisted living due to her Alzheimer’s and caught the virus toward the end of the summer. She was in the hospital for less than three days, and shortly my mom told me she had passed.
One thing I had never understood was how I was supposed to grieve for someone that I never got to say goodbye to. My favorite person in the world had passed and I never got to tell her I loved her one more time. This was the first person I had ever lost and I didn’t know what to do. How was I supposed to react, I knew I was sad but I didn’t know how to move past that. I never got my goodbye, and I will forever remember that.
This pandemic had taught me a lot when it comes to being grateful for the people you have around you, never take it for granted because you never know when they won’t be around anymore.
