circle of life

No sooner had I written that last post, than my grandmother passed away. I don’t usually like to talk about such personal things in this space, but I feel so compelled to do something.

Grief. It has hovered over my home so much in the last year, I can hardly breathe from its heavy burden. It sneaks up on you when you are brushing your teeth or reading a story to the children. And having two young children around, I can’t really pause for a breath. I love them and I want them around, but they don’t get it.  So we go on.

And on.

That’s surely what my grandmother did. She saw love, loss, pain, joy and peace in her 84 years. I can only imagine how much of it she had in a home with a husband and five children.

I’m coming up on my 40th year here on this planet, and while I don’t consider myself exactly an expert, there is one thing I have learned: life goes on.

Whether you want it to or not.

So I go on. One foot in front of the other. One breath at a time.

She was a crochet-er, my grandmother. She kept her hands busy.  Making afghans for family members and new babies.  Even though I’m a knitter, I’ve always felt a connection to her through our love of yarn.

How ironic that I started a new baby sweater on the day she passed. Some dear friends are expecting their first, and I am knitting the baby boy a sweater. To keep my hands busy and to welcome new life.  As Elizabeth Zimmerman says in her book Knitting Without Tears, “Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crisis.”