today

today is my grandmother's funeral.

instead of thinking too hard about how i feel, i'm thinking about what i will wear, and the 118 mile drive each way, and the one geocache i have to find on the way because i'm still finding a cache a day and maybe that's crazy, but it's a thing like that that can keep you going.

if we don't count thanksgiving (and i don't) the last time i went to sit with my grandmother and visit was november 7, which seems a long time ago.

she spent a lot of the fall alternating between being in pretty good shape considering and degenerating, unable to make sense of what time of day it was, or what season it was.

it was a lucky thing for me that i could arrange some trips to go have adventures by day and then come tell her about them in the afternoons, and lucky i was out having adventures on the landscape of her youth.

if i went in the day to lowell lake state park, she would tell me of the days before it was a park and the family used to go for a summer day and stay all day. if i went to ludlow spring she would tell of how on a hot summer day her father would put all the kids in the car and go to get water and also stop for ice cream besides.

november 7, i learned that last day i sat with her, had been her wedding anniversary. i hadn't really known her husband.

see, mine is a blended family. ruth was my grandmother by my mother's second marriage, so while she was very much a grandmother to me, anything that came before the intersection of our families didn't matter much.

i'd met her husband once or twice, but he died pretty early on so i wan't attached to him.

it was a long time ago.

but this last november 7 i was sitting with her and she was telling the story as if it were yesterday. she told me about the dinner they had and the dress she wore and she remembered the date. "it was the seventh of november," she said.

"today is november 7th." i told her.

"it is? well."

and we sat a while in silence.