The On-Purposes.

The not-my grandchildren were here this weekend. It seemed like three days and four nights but it was only one day and one night. Strange that. We danced, we played, we sang nonsensical songs about nonsensical things because those are the only songs I know the words to. We cried. Okay, they cried and when they stopped crying, I wept quietly on my own.

Little tiny faces that are nothing to me, not my grandkids, her grandkids as I’m constantly reminded when I say anything corrective to them. “Don’t worry about it, G; they’re not your grandkids.” Yes, yes I’m continually constantly aware that my grandsons are hundreds of miles away, and I’m here, with children I’m only allowed to love on the fringe edges. But I say nothing. I entertain as a complete clown would. I smile and I laugh, and these tears are never offered up for judgment. My weakness as she deems it.

She doesn’t understand loss or separation, and if she does, she never lets it show. She lives her life as if all involved will live forever, as if she has all the time in the world, later, for hugs and kisses, as if we all lived in a bubble where there is no disease, no pestilence, no death to our loved ones, ever. I live in an entirely different world, where people come and go quite suddenly, with and without warning – where there is no later, no tomorrow, only today, so today you show all that bottled up love, you give all those hugs that tomorrow will seem frivolous but today they are everything, they are the last ones, ever.

My husband, although divorced for 31 years now, I still think of him as my husband when I speak about him, the only one I know for a fact I’ll ever have but I digress – my husband used to say to the kids when they were little – ‘I brought you in this world and I’ll take you out – make another one that looks just like you’. This was his “straighten up right now” speech. But it didn’t happen that way. My son left this world and we did not make another one.

Why all this melancholy this morning? Because this morning as her grandson vied for her attention, with his 8-month old mentality, she ignored him, in favor of Facebook which could burn and go to Hell for all I care. I played with him, though, and made him laugh, dancing and singing for his enjoyment, annoying her as I tried to get her to join in, to hopefully realize that this moment could be the last moment on Earth but I only succeeded in getting a sigh, a “see what I put up with daily ” sigh. Because after all, a random sprinkling of complete strangers and what they ate for dinner is increasingly more important than the familial love standing just at arm’s length. *sigh* See what I put up with daily?

I don’t care much for progress, or really maybe it’s just the internet and it’s abundance of bullshit that decays our minds and draws us away from what is truly important – each other – maybe that’s what I dislike so intensely.

Be kind to one another, Ellen says at the end of every show. That statement should probably be modified in my world – Be aware of one another…don’t take for granted what could suddenly be gone so fast. They don’t call them on-purposes, you know; they call them accidents.