Grey Days

"I love the rain the most when it stops..." -- Joe Purdy

I wish the rain would stop. Or start. I hate Bogota's occasional grey ways. They always seem to coincide with greyness in our lives. My grandma is ill, tired and old. I wish she weren't any of these things. I wish I'd known her as a young woman, that we'd been nurses together in the war, or bridge partners, or middle-aged housewives feeling too young to have such broods. How cruel is it that the people who often matter the most to us, our parents, our grandparents, are so much older and die sooner? I just wish it weren't that way. GG lived with us when I was a teenager, and when her manic depression mirrored my teenage ups and downs, the house was a bundle of jangling nerves and slamming doors. Sure wish I'd appreciated her more then. We did have some good quiet times together, both of us curled up in armchairs, reading in silence, or watching Wheel of Fortune and each trying to guess the word first. Guess I owe her a lot -- my love of words and books, ability to sit quietly and be happiest that way, and probably also my aversion to smoking (from her falling asleep reading and smoking and burning little holes in her favorite chair).