❤️
I went to my grandmother’s grave.
I’ve had a connection to this grave since I was little.
What that’s about will be revealed in due time maybe?
Does it really matter?
No.
The monument is in the Hamilton, Municipal Cemetery.
As I walk towards the gravestone, I could see that the first ‘L’ in Lillian was barely on the stone. The ‘x’ in Cox was partially off and the ‘1’ in 1903 was missing.
I lose my shit.
I cry like a baby.
It was so cathartic.
I felt my feelings.
They come flowing out of me like a dam-
Releasing 15 years of sadness.
I had never really had anyone die in my life that I was that close to.
She was my grandma and I loved her very much.
We were two peas in a pod.
My life was complete when she was around.
I take off my sandals and sit on the grass in the exact spot where her ashes are buried.
I didn’t know that at the time.
Once I stop crying, I release the sadness and heart pain of all my relatives.
Everyone is set free that day.
All of my ancestors.
When Grandma died, I was in Australia.
I was told not to come home and I didn’t.
At the timer, I had a fear of having a panic attack on a plane.
I didn’t go to her funeral.
I sent a story to be read instead.
I didn’t see her being buried.
Her ashes being put into the ground.
I created a quilt for her instead.
The first of 2 quilts that I made in her honour.
When she was dying,
I was convinced that the creation of the quilt was helping to set her free from her ego and the material world.
Her ego didn’t want to leave.
It took her weeks to die.
She wanted to see her son, my Uncle Ralph, who just couldn’t witness his mother dying.
Grandma called out for her son who never came.
…As the story goes.
I finished the quilt.
Then she died.
A part of me died too.
But there is also what awakened inside of me that day too-
The love of quilting and creativity using fabric as my medium.
Even today, I sew on top of grandma’s singer sewing machine that is inside of the table where my sewing machine resides.
I miss you grandma.
Me not coming to Canada to see my grandmother before she died,
Not going to her funeral,
Not seeing her buried,
Was a gift.
“Thank you grandma, I love you.”
15 years later, I grieve and miss her.
This is her gift to me.
To die under the circumstances where I don’t visit her,
Until I am ready,
Ready to surrender to life.
That is her gift to me.
My awakening.
Just at the right time.
I honour my grief process.
I cry and I cry.
Respectfully, I cry.
And so I am healed.
“You are brave.
To feel your feelings.
To free yourself from the past and,
from the future too.
You are set free to become who you were meant to be.
A better version of yourself than you were from the day you arrived.
As you let yourself off of the hook,
You in turn let us all off of the hook.
Ancestors,
Inheritance,
Lifetimes loved, healed and free,
With one single breath.
That’s all it took.
To feel your feelings.
To welcome them.
In welcoming them they chose not to stay.
Go figure.
If only you knew.
But you weren’t meant to know,
not until the perfect time.
That time is now.”
***
I am back in Australia.
Next late spring, summer the grave stone will be washed and grandma’s name will be engraved like it always meant to have been.
I’ve taken care of it.
Made things as they were meant to be.
Gosh, it feels good to have organised and done this all on my own.