Bus ride back to Philly from dc. (I really typed “back home” but erased it and got chills that I actually refer to Philly as my home…)
Got off the phone with my mom just now and I can’t stop thinking about family. Sometimes…… Okay, a lot of times I feel like I idolize family. It wasn’t always like that. In fact, I can tell you a turning point in my life where it actually became so, but since then I’ve learned a lot and blah blah blah. But I’m always still learning. And one lesson I feel like I have to learn and relearn time and time again is giving my family up to god. I know it’s the only way I’ll find peace in anything and it sounds so logical to trust the lord of all things with my dear and precious family… But for some reason my actions, my inactions, my anxieties, my fears, my worries, my pleas, they all don’t show it. What have I got to lose if I count it all as lost, right? I guess the problem here lies in the fact that I cannot yet come to terms with calling my family a loss. I guess i still have things to lose, after all.
My father’s mother passed in the second semester of my freshman year. I mourned more so for the way in which my family handled her death than with the actual grievance of her leaving this earth.
My mother’s father passed 20 years from yesterday. I never met the man, but I am told he was a man of great influence and this summer, I was able to dig up some old photos by which I was quite taken aback by how classy and dashing he was. Very tall, well dressed, and I definitely could sense an air of respect and dignity through his sepia toned two dimensional figure.
His wife, my dear and loving maternal grandmother, is alive but far from well. I cannot begin to tell you what this woman has gone through, what she has done for my family, and what little she has received in comparison to what she deserves. I cling to the hope that she will live to see me graduate, so that I can give her my first real paycheck. I want her to approve of my husband, to watch me get married, and to adore my children. There are so many things I want to show her and feed her and do for her…………… 할머니 힘내세요!!
Heading into the 16th grade of my educational career, my mind is racing with memories I want to reinforce, endear, highlight, cherish— as well as those that I cannot erase, cannot fix, and cannot bear to revisit.
All these memories, I lift to you. Help me not to hoard— even memories— as I tend to do. Instead, may you be glorified in the unwritten memories to come.
