in some brighter clime

My grandmother died.  I am so, so, so glad that I got to visit her just a few weeks ago in February.  I'm so glad I didn't try to wait until a more 'convenient' time, like Spring Break, or after graduation.  What is a 'convenient' time?  Life is always happening, until it's not.  You carve out days and moments because you love someone and so you visit them, even though they can't hear you that well, and even though it's too hard for them to play Old Maid and they probably wouldn't remember the rules to Aggravation anymore.  You go just to feel her squeeze your hand in hers. 

(Me and my grandma in May, 2014)

Last night I considered trying to make a pot roast, because my grandma made the best pot roast, but that's a skill I've never mastered.  I tried to run some errands, and I thought about when I was little how Grandma and Dzadek would wave from the front porch whenever our visits were over.  I looked around Target for a mini-grow kit, because I thought maybe I could grow a flower for my grandma, because she always loved gardening.  Target only had a basil kit.  Not quite the same.  I might try to go to a real nursery to get a real plant.  Something pretty and springtime-y.  And maybe purple, since purple was my grandma's favorite color.

This post doesn't do her justice, but it's all I have right now.

Lines of poetry go flitting through my mind, mostly poetry by Anna Letitia Barbauld.  I've spent the better part of the last six months with Barbauld's works, so I guess it makes sense, even though the poems I'm thinking of have nothing to do with my thesis.  Instead, the title of this post comes from her poem "Life" (though, my thoughts tend more towards her poems "Dirge" and "A Thought on Death").  In "Life" Barbauld writes,

"Life! We've been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning,
      Choose thine own time;
Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime
      Bid me Good morning."