Sunday night I lost the last of my grandparents.

I suppose I should qualify that.  Peg Patterson wasn’t related to me at all.  She was Richard’s Mother, so when I tell people who she is I have to give the long and convoluted “if my Mom and Dick had ever gotten married she would have been my Grandmother” explanation.  I wasn’t even allowed to refer to her as my Grandmother.  When I was a kid, she hated that term.  She said it made her feel old.  I was to call her “Peg,” and nothing else.  It wasn’t until my generation started having kids that she accepted being called “Granny Peg.”

My relationship with her is hard to explain, as is my reaction to her death.  It was…unexpected.  I didn’t even know she was sick, really.  Yes, she was old and living in a nursing home.  Every time I saw her, though, she seemed to be in fine health (for an 86 year old).  I guess she was having heart problems, though, and was in the hospital waiting to have a pace maker put in.  Mom says she must have decided she didn’t want it.

I don’t think I’ve let myself really stop to think about how I feel.  Maybe I just haven’t felt like I could.  Is it odd for me to say that I feel as though I’ve had so much death around me in the last few years that I’ve kind of run out of license to talk about it?

I don’t know.  I wish everything would just calm down for a few hours so I could really sit back and take stock of the situation, but life just doesn’t work that way.  There’s always something, right?

Anyway…Peg is dead, and in true form her granddaughter didn’t bother to mention my Mother or us kids in the obituary.  You know, never mind that she has spent every major holiday, birthday, and various and sundry other events with us for the last 20 years.  Or that it was my Mother who she called every night to talk about her day, and who helped her with her finances. 

I’m sad Peg is dead, I really am, but I’m really glad that tie is gone. 

Nothing quite like familial ties to dead fucking weight.

Meh.  This was supposed to be kind of a euology and it’s turning into bile.  I didn’t intend that.   As I said, I don’t think I’ve really been able to sort out my own feelings on all this just yet.

Anyway, funeral is tomorrow. 

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for now.

Patterson, Margaret M., 86, of South Pasadena, died Sunday (March 25, 2007) at Palms of Pasadena Hospital, St. Petersburg.

She came here in 1956 from her native Philadelphia. She was a member of the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle and enjoyed bingo. Survivors include a granddaughter, Mary K. Scott, Tampa; four great- grandchildren; and a great-great-granddaughter. Brett Funeral Home & Cremation Services, St. Petersburg.