home

I can't go to sleep tonight, and I know that if there's any chance of me not being terribly late to work tomorrow morning, that I should be dozing of...about an hour ago.  I've had a mentally busy weekend though, and as it is, well, I just cannot sleep.

My grandmother is in the hospital, and it is very likely that she doesn't even realize where she is.  This is a very hard thing for me to swallow.  She is a brilliant woman that I have always looked up to.  She was a war nurse, who did grad work at Yale, and taught nursing for many years.  She is not my birth grandmother -- she never had children of her own, but married my grandfather, a widower with a very large family of his own.  I spent many of my childhood days with her, and am having a tremendously difficult time reconciling her current state with reality.

As I am learning, over the telephone, what is going on at home, my mother has just yesterday called me to ask if I would be willing to move into my grandparents' house for the summer to give some companionship to one or both of them while I'm doing grad school again.  So now, i have to talk to my landlords to see when I can leave, to my boss to tell her of my notice, to my dad to find out if I can store my furniture, and...  Really, I don't know what I'm doing.  Everything is kind of spinning.  I knew that I wasn't going to be here permanently, but I never dreamed that these would be the circumstances of my departure. 

I want to go because this is my family and I will do anything for them, but part of me realizes that by taking these steps, I am conceding my grandparents mortality.  I do not want to grow up enough to realize that they may soon pass into paradise.  Then there's the shallow and selfish reason for not wanting to move back -- it doesn't fit my "big world" framework to move back to my tiny church community home.  I have this idea that I should be more than where I grew up.  The truth is, that it is arrogant and wrong of me to think this way.  Maybe this is God's way of humbling me.  Why am I such a snob in the first place?  This is the home that taught me compassion for all people, patience, a deep faith, and unfailing love.  Really, what more is there than that?

I'll go home gladly, after a little bit of mental processing, and a better timeline of what needs to get done when.  You readers can pray for me in this area -- after all, we all know what a lousy planner I am.

Much love,

Holly