Weekend Wrap-Up

This past weekend was bittersweet, as expected. I was in Southern California, I got to swim, and see my mama and my sister - that was the sweet part. The bitter part was that my family had just made the difficult decision to put my sweet grandma in a nursing home. The situation is even more difficult because the family was/is really divided on this.

My mom has been my grandmother's primary care giver since my grandfather's passing over 14 years ago. She, my sister, and I moved back into the house my mom grew up in (where we had also lived a few years prior just after my parent's divorce), and the four of us took care of each other. That house was as much my sister's and my childhood home as it was my mom's and her sibling's. As you can guess - we (especially my mom) advocated for my grandma to stay in her home, but it was a battle we didn't win.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the story isn't just mine to tell. I, like many bloggers, struggle with the balance of being authentic in this space and being respectful of the privacy of my loved ones. So I'll spare you the family drama. Long story, well, long, my grandma was moved, and our childhood home was sold, so my mom and sister had to move too. It was/is sudden, startling, and sad. There are member's of my extended family that I have never felt closer to, and others that now feel like strangers.

So we packed up our things and went through the artifacts of our lives' stories. I found baby clothes, well loved dolls, kindergarten homework, old love letters, high school yearbooks, mixed tapes, and my travel journals. I purged and condensed the relics of my life into two trunks. And, along with my mom and sister, closed the chapter and said good bye.

While my grandma isn't in her own home, she is in a safe place surrounded by caring professionals. It's definitely not ideal, but, what can you do? My mom has moved into her own place in the valley (with a pool!) and, for maybe the first time since I was born, able to concentrate on care of herself. And my sister is moving in with high school sweet heart. So, there is a silver lining. Maybe sometimes things need to be burnt so they can be rebuilt. 

Images of my mama's pool and the view from my our former back yard (on a really clear day you can see the Channel Islands past those hills), via yours truly.