ONE LOVE, Her Love, love her

Three days ago my Grandma would have been 90 years old. It will be five years on March 28, since she has passed away. It will be five years that my heart has not fully been restored and it will be five years since I have loved whole-heartedly. 

I know that I have discussed my Mimi in previous blogs, but this particular blog is solely devoted to her. Mimi was unlike any person that I have ever met, or will ever come to meet. She loved so hard and with every second of her life she devoted to those who loved her in return. 

Mimi was diagnosed with Alzheimer's when I was a little girl. She lived with us all of my life and was therefore more like a mother to me without the discipline. :) We would get into all kinds of mischief together and because of her dementia, play time became more and more because as I grew older,  she seemed to be growing younger. Now understand that this is not "The Curious Case of Marjorie Frampton" by any means, but as the Alzheimer's took over, so too did the failure of her memory. 

There was never one second in my life where I questioned the love that this woman had for me. If there was ever perfect love one this earth, it was hers. Her unselfish, patient and everlasting love. As a young teenager, I remember going to her room to check on her and finding her writing her letters to each and every one of her relatives and friends. She would just be sitting at her desk, content in her own company. 

She was the funniest lady that you will ever meet. Even at the age of 84, she was "sharper than a whip." as she would say. Because she was an amputee of one of her legs, Mimi was confined to a wheelchair for the last quarter of her life. But as my mom says, who never parted from my grandma's side, "She never complained, not once, she would be patient and said that the wheelchair gave her character." Even in the most frustrating times, she would never complain or play the blame game, which would be so easy for most to do. 

Instead she would make the best out of it. She would let us have rides on the wheelchair, play shopping cart around the house with it, and her most famous joke of all, "If anyone hurts your feelings, tell them that I'm going to roll over them with my wheelchair!" It was just comedy to see this precious little old lady have the most outrageous things to say.

Life without her has been hard. Really hard, still hard every day of my life. I was the happiest, carefree little girl when she was in my life. And after she passed, I would struggle to find happiness. I still do. I am having a hard time finding that happy little girl that I once was, I guess that when my Mimi passed, I grew up. 

But I have found growing up to be too hard, too difficult and virtually impossible. I have discovered that one really never does fully grow up. It's just a matter of how someone reacts to situations that defines their "maturity." I have been struggling so much lately because I feel that I am trying to wrestle this fine line of who I am. 

I don't need others telling me who I am, and I have learned that I need to stop listening to others. It's about me and my heart and how God speaks to me. I found my self almost screaming at the top of my lungs in tears today begging God to show me love... this love that I have no idea about. I relate any kind of love to the one that my grandma gave me unconditionally.  I thought I knew what love was, what contentment was, what being a grown up was, but what I failed to do was to let another person determine my thinking. 

I can't put my happiness in someone else's hands. That's something that I will never do again. For it is only God's hands that can fill me. Because if you are doing it for God, your heart will always be content.

I am so sick of thinking that I am depressed and having others suggest counseling, I am just more than ready to be free and dependent on God. I wish that this blog could solve all of the problems that I have addressed but for now, I know that I need to leave this open, and determine the answers on my own.

Mimi's love has set the bar high, in many ways I think that I have the same love that my grandmother had. I just wish that she was here so I could ask her how she dealt with someone she loved not loving her back. I wish I could ask her how she handled hurt. Because when you love so hard, hurt comes at such a heavy cost.

For now all I can strive to be is like my grandma... Because her love lives on in me.

One Love, her love, love her