A lot of thinking

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently. (Not that I don't think a lot at other times, but I've been more conscious of it recently I suppose).

Nana passed away eleven days ago. I don't really know what else to say about that. I think it just finally caught up with me yesterday. For the first few days it all just seemed pretty surreal. Like "Oh Nana's just away, not at the house, on a trip, or something". But it's been eleven days and she hasn't come back. And I think it's finally real for me now. We went to lunch at Easy Street Cafe yesterday, and I think that was partly it. We haven't been to Easy Street in 14 years, since 1995 when Papa passed away. It was his favorite cafe and we used to go there all the time when Kyle and I were younger; I think Nana just never wanted to deal with the memories of going back there after Papa wasn't around anymore. It just sort of seemed like a very real sign that Nana wasn't around anymore.

But it's made me think a lot about Grandma. Oddly enough I had been thinking about her a lot this summer already. My boyfriend's grandmother passed away at the beginning of the summer and he says it just didn't really hit him for about a week until one day it did, and he realized that we would never get to meet each other. I had been thinking that about Grandma recently too. I think she would have loved JonMarke (and she would have been so happy that I had found a nice Christian boy who made me happy!) and it makes me sad that she isn't around to meet him.

And I've been thinking about Papa for mostly the same reason. We've found the greatest pictures in Nana's house from years and years ago, and it makes me sad that Papa's not around anymore. JonMarke reminds me a lot of him, with his love of English and debate. Luckily Nana did get to meet JonMarke and I know she really liked him, which is really comforting.

(I figured out what else to say about Nana passing away...) She had been diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 84 after almost 70 years of smoking. So we at least had some sort of warning. She had gone through radiation treatment which shrunk the tumor, but not as much as we had hoped. In a very selfish way I am in no way ready to not have Nana around anymore, but it really was for the best that she passed away the way she did. She hadn't started to get sick from the cancer. She passed away peacefully in her sleep, in her house, with her dogs, surrounded by her garden. It was all exactly as she wanted, and so for her sake it really was the best.

My parents and I have been over at Nana's every day for the past eleven days, dealing with her house and her things and all of that. She was a huge collector (she and Papa both) and we've just been amazed at how much stuff is in that house. Eleven days later we've got most of it at least looked at once and we've figured out what to do with most of it, even if we haven't quite gotten around to doing it yet. But it's time for a break. Last week was insane at work what with finishing up a huge requirements project that was due to be signed off on by Friday, finishing up our intern project which culminated with an executive presentation on Friday, and a huge potluck for the IT department on Wednesday which I had been volunteered to help plan. All of it put together just sort of threatens to make me insane, so I came straight home today after work instead of going to Nana's, which I think was the correct choice.

So now it's time to stop crying (for tonight at least), and get some food in me. Hopefully that will help.

On the bright side, I'm taking Friday off from work and flying down to Escondido on Thursday night to visit my boyfriend. We're going on a date to Disneyland this weekend! It should be nice and relaxing, which is exactly what I need right now.