Talking to Her Sideways

There was a time period during the last four or so years when Adri started getting distant and I hardly ever saw her even though she lived just 15 minutes away. It was for a variety of reasons, and it broke my heart, and I did keep trying to fix that but kept getting shot down by her.

Nothing was working, so I eventually tried making some oblique posts, talking to her sideways, in an effort to try to get her to understand that what we were losing together could never be reclaimed, and that tomorrow was not guaranteed.

This was one such Facebook post from three years ago today, ostensibly about me wishing that I could spend just one more Christmas with my grandparents, and of trying to hold on and appreciate time spent together.  But of course I was really talking about her:

December 26, 2022

I miss gram and gramp every day, and especially at Christmas time. I wish I could spend one more Christmas with my grandparents.

You think those times will last forever, but they don't. You want to relive them all and hold on to them, wishing that you never wasted a single moment out of spite or miscommunication or stubbornness or inconvenience or ill-timing, but you can't.

All you can do is to try to appreciate the time you have in the now, and hope as was the case with my grandparents that you've created relationships and connections with others that are meaningful and important, knowing that time just moves forward, it does not wait around and allow do-overs.

Eventually, it becomes too late; moments lost can never be reclaimed.

I'm thankful for all the moments with my grandparents that help make me who I am today.

I thought it was too on the nose and obvious, I thought it would irritate her, but she didn't seem to realize that I wasn't really talking about my grandparents (her great grandparents), but rather that I was really talking about her, us, our time lost. She replies about missing gram, too, but doesn't seem to understand who my real intended audience was.

We never did spend an actual Christmas Eve or Day together again after covid, but at least the following year (2023) and last year I was able to bring them presents and watch her and the boys open them at her apartment, even if it wasn't on the actual day.

I'd unfortunately given up trying to make that happen.

Since her hospitalization in early 2024 I did see them more often; it was becoming more regular, finally, and I believe that this Christmas, if she'd survived, she would have come over on Eve and Day like the great Christmases of the past.

In the end, of course, that was not to be, but I did get to spend Eve and Day with the boys, together with cookies and carols and family.

Just not my daughter.

I wish I could have gotten through to her, here. I wish I could have tried harder and longer these last four years. Especially since it turned out to be our last four years together, I wish I could have made that time special and normal and comfortable and peaceful.

I know that I couldn't make that happen alone, that she had some responsibility, too, but I wish I could have taken it all on for her. And me. And us.