This has not been one of the best weeks I've had. That's not to say it's been all fire and brimstone -- it hasn't been an Old Testament kind of week -- but the victories and good things have been few and far between. One of them happened last night; I passed a needed certification test on my first try.
I just got word that my grandmother died. This is a call I've been expecting and would suck, except for the fact that she's been on the decline for a long time, including pretty severe memory loss. My immediate reaction was, "Thank goodness, it's finally over." A year or two ago, I was planning on driving down to see her (even though I knew that she wouldn't recognize me or remember who I was) and was pretty much told flat-out by my family not to bother. This was after several years of not making time to get down to see her before everything had slipped away, or writing letters on a regular basis.
So, yeah, I'm glad that her decline (and, at the end, physical suffering) has come to an end, and I'm glad that the family members who've invested such dedication into her these past several years may finally have a chance to get some semblance of normalcy back in their life, but I also feel more than a little guilty for being so short-sighted. I have awesome memories of spending time with this woman back when I was a kid -- she was fun, full of fire and life, and the only one I know who played multi-hand Solitaire (or Uno) to draw blood. Yet I don't grieve for her now...because that woman already died many years ago. What left us today was her shell.
I don't know how I should be reacting right now.