Regretfully…

Grandma Pickle… This was what we called my Grandmother. For several years, she was just Grandma and sometimes to differentiate, I would say Grandma Popplewell to explain who I was talking about.

One day along came my little brother Steven and as he got old enough to talk and would be silly or mischievous, she would call him a little pickle and then one day, he said, “Well, you’re a Grandma Pickle!”

It stuck and many many grandkids and great-grandkids and even the great-greats called her Grandma Pickle! People who are close to the family, but not IN the family, call her Grandma Pickle too!

Unfortunately, Grandma Pickle died on October 1st, 2022. She will always live on in our memories and in each of us whom she touched with her life.

I have some awesome memories with her from the time I was young until adulthood and into my 40’s. However, in 2016, I borrowed some money from my grandmother and then struggled to get her paid back and to this day, I still owed her about $180-ish. I always planned on and wanted to get her paid back before she was gone, but I didn’t. I’m not going to explain why, or defend myself, it just did not get done.

The money I owed her became a really big deal and she was angry with me over more than just that. You see, I had lost my husband of 23.5 years in late 2014 and I met someone new in early 2016. I fell head over heels and I was behaving in a way that my family did not recognize. I felt the same inside, but looking back, I am sure it was bewildering. Anyway, we were talking one day and she got really angry with me and said some really hurtful things to me and criticized me as a mother. She even accused me of trying to take advantage of her and steal from her. That probably hurt the most, she was in her right mind and I would NEVER try to take advantage of her!

It hurt me pretty bad, because I thought she was the one person who truly understood my loneliness and that I was finally happy. She usually would allow me to explain my side of things and we would usually come to some kind of understanding. However, the gossip amongst the family had run rampant and she already had her mind made up!

Back then, it did not occur to me that she felt hurt and abandoned by ME, because I had moved 45 minutes away and got a different job and it made it much harder for me to be able to take her to the doctor, etc.. Not to mention, when I started dating Mel, many times I was out of town or had plans.

I guess I became a little self absorbed when I found someone new, who loved me just like I was and made me feel wanted and that probably hurt her feelings that I was not making time for her like before.

We always had so much fun on those trips to the doctor, grocery and Mighty Dollar and I plan to share some of those memories in a later blog.

Anyway, along with all that hurt, I also felt guilty. There was a part of me, that knew something wasn’t right, and I felt like the same person, but I was so happy with Mel! I felt alive and seen and heard and desired/wanted. I did not remember feeling that way, EVER. I thought people would be happy for me and I couldn’t understand why they weren’t being more patient with me. I knew everything I was doing was not the best decisions at the time, but at the same time, I was in new territory, a place I had never been before.

Apparently, those things are not taken into consideration when you are in your early 40’s. You are expected to know better, no matter how much LIFE you have actually experienced or not.

So… I withdrew, not only from Grandma, but kind of from everyone. I tried not to withdraw from my kids, but that eventually happened as well, but that is a totally different story. I do not know if I can EVER blog about that publicly.

The point is, because I was hurt and because I felt she was angry with me, I kept my distance. I no longer called her to chat and catch up on life, there were times in my life, we talked for hours upon hours and simply enjoyed each other’s company!

That was 2017 and I saw her maybe a handful of times since then. Would say hello and give hugs, but I also felt estranged, so was not fully myself with her and she wasn’t with me either! I assumed she preferred things that way, and because I was dealing with so much discomfort in other areas and dealing with people being disappointed in me I could not force myself to talk to her about it and work it out. I feared being judged and rejected still.

Did I realize what I was doing until this last week after she died? Nope… I didn’t. Do, I feel guilty that I let that go on so long and not take the time to apologize and enjoy a relationship with her these last 5 years? Yes, I do… I am shocked it was that long ago!

Am I going to continue to beat myself up over it or am I going to forgive myself? Will I take this and learn from it and apply to other situations?

I think Grandma Pickle would WANT me to forgive myself, learn from this by applying what I now understand to making relationships with people who are still alive better. She would WANT me to FOCUS on the good memories we had with each other…. BECAUSE, we have way more years of GOOD relationship and good memories together and it should outweigh the last 5 years! (She would also edit the crap out of this blog and tell me stop using run-on sentences, lol)

I plan to do a few more blogs on different memories I have of Grandma Pickle, to honor her memory but I want to leave you with a snippet of a really funny one, or… at least it was funny to the two of us!

So, this was 2015 or 2016, when I took her to the ENT to have her hearing checked. This was one doctor she had not been to recently or maybe ever and we had to fill out the paperwork. She was not able to see the paper in the dimly lit waiting room and so I was filling it out for her. She had her head leaned over on her fist and was all ho-hum and unimpressed, but answering my questions. Then we got to the other questions outside of name, DOB and address and I just looked at her and matter-of -factly, said, “Are you pregnant?”

Well, she got tickled and started laughing and said, “yeah, right!” We then proceeded through the rest of the questionnaire giggling like little girls and at times struggling to catch our breath while giving nonsense answers to questions to each other, but putting down the correct answers. I think she had erectile dysfunction that day too!

People gave us funny looks, but we did not care, we laughed so hard our sides hurt and our bladders beckoned us to the bathroom and it took us WAYyyy longer to fill out those papers but we both agreed we did not care what others thought or how long it took! WE had fun with it and that is all that mattered!

Come back for more blogs on the fun and sweet memories I have of her. I am so grateful I was able to find rides to and from her funeral, because the memories flooded back… I did not realize I was holding them at bay because I was scared to talk to her and make things right.

Young or old, we never know when someone is leaving this earth and while harsh words between two people might need some distance or breathing room, it NEVER needs more than a week and even then, it could be too long. Agree to disagree if you have to, but ALWAYS let the people you love know you love them.

This quote by Aretha Franklin sums this up well…

“You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off.”

That not only goes for my Grandma Pickle, it goes for ME and YOU and everyone else too. We have to take people as a whole, nobody is ALL good and nobody is ALL evil.

Until next time…

Love to all,
Shanshe