Regret

I'd have a hard time even recalling the past few weeks for our family. I know we went camping over the June 12th weekend up in Freedom NH at Danforth Bay Campground. It was a wet weekend but we still had fun with our family and Amy's (my brother Stevie's wife) family. It's always a good time when we all get together. I also know the next weekend we had my sister's baby shower which we pulled off pretty well despite our last minute planning. I will blog again about these events, but the thing we've been consumed with over the past few weeks was the downslide in health of my Grandpa that started that very wet camping weekend. That was when we first heard that he was starting to refuse to eat or drink. He quickly went downhill from there and passed away this past Thursday (June 25th) in the early evening. It's been a very sad few weeks, and honestly one laden with a good amount of regret for me personally. My track record for visiting my Grandpa hadn't been that great. It had, in fact, been about 6 months since I had last seen him when we went to visit those few times last week. That visit 6 months prior was for his 89th birthday, and he seemed so happy to have so much company! It sadly was only the second time he had seen Ana since we brought her home and he was so taken with her! When Ian was little, and Grandpa was living in a senior community close by we would visit him once a week at his little apartment. Somehow when he went to the nursing home, I let those visits seriously lapse, and it got to the point that I really only saw him on Christmas when he would spend the holiday with my parents. He would even ask me, "Cammie, you are home right? Why don't you come visit me?", and I would pledge to myself that I would get better. But I never did. I've been wracking my brain for reasons why this happened and the only thing I can think of is that after he went to the nursing home, he wasn't happy. Whenever we would visit, he would basically ask us to "Get me out of here". And the medications he was on made him very sleepy, and he would sometimes just kind of stare off and almost seem like he wasn't there. I guess I just didn't know what to say. No excuse, I know. At the visits we made at the beginning of last week, he would open his eyes when we talked to him. I'll never forget the way he opened his eyes wide and turned his head when Ian came up to his bedside. He loved his grandkids so much. I just wish I had been a better one. I guess the lesson I've taken from this is that no matter how uncomfortable a situation makes me, that if I care about someone I need to do whatever it takes to show them. Life really is too short to live my life any other way. For now, I'll ponder my memories of my Grandpa; the vanilla sandwich cookies that must always be split and spread with peanut butter before eating, and the lesson in the proper way to store a piece of chewed gum on the tip of your nose until you can resume chewing, the peanut blossom candies, and the smell of tobacco. These things I will take with me. I only hope he knows how much I really loved him.