feelings

i'm in a strange place tonight...i think. sometimes i just feel like making a cocoon around myself or burrowing into a hole or something. nothing is wrong really, just feeling pensive and quiet.

i talked with my mom on the phone for a while tonight. we talked about my granny and her health. the doctor said he thought she had about 6 more months. i feel so strangely about all of this. i guess i'm weird in the whole family thing, b/c, with the exception of my parents, i have always felt the "family" connection more with my close friends and bible study girls than with my actual flesh-and-blood relatives. i don't know why this is. my parents have always been really big on "boundaries." they both come from pretty dysfunctional family situations, so our relationships with the extended family have really been structured, birthday & holiday type events. i'm not close to my siblings either--they are super-close to each other, but i have always tended to be on my own. i feel like a pretty even mix of my parents though. my mom and i are really close and have tons in common (especially the compulsive shopping thing...one time she bought 10 lamps in a day), and my dad and i have a really deep emotional connection that causes lots of nostalgia and tears for me when i watch movies like the little mermaid & father of the bride.

well, they are looking at a hospice facility in town for "when that time comes" it's weird how we edit ourselves when it comes to the hard topics. i like to just put everything out there and say it like it is. granny has been going through things and apparently has some jewelry that she wants me and my sister to divide up. for some reason that, more than anything else here, ellicits the feelings for me. when i was little and we would go visit my grandparents i thought they were so rich (really, my pappy was an alcoholic and they were on welfare--we called the government cheese "granny cheese"). we would visit their old farmhouse in uticah and she would make a big breakfast of biscuits and gravy, and then would scrape the scraps into an old pan and put it on the back porch for the "wild cats" that were outside--we weren't allowed to play with them. they didn't have heat in the house and there was a washing machine in the back yard...she would always give us "granny bags" before we would go home--brown paper sacks with cans of orange juice and twinkies and little toys. after i finished eating--but before everyone else did--i would excuse myself and go back into the living room where she had little tables covered with picture frames. this was exciting to me b/c, for some reason, she kept her jewelry behind these pictures. ring boxes, and necklaces, and bracelets. i always loved to sneak and look at that jewelry--it was just so beautiful. one summer after pappy died i stayed with her for a few weeks and we would watch the home shopping channel and she ordered jewelry and even called in and was on the air ordering a car set for my brother--it was so excited and glamourous! weird how our young minds perceive things.

it hurts to know that she most likely won't live to meet my children.

i don't deal well with aging and death. i feel so separated from the situations and i only really feel it when i stop and think about things in detail like tonight.