a little bit of life in 20 years

lately i've spent a lot of time thinking about my own mortality. that sounds macabre, i know. 

mostly because it is. but it has been on my mind regardless. 

this world is fallen. and there's so much hurt wrapped up inside of it. sometimes that truth makes it really hard to appreciate the good.

but some of the good slipped by - not unnoticed, but - unremarked upon due to all of the other things both happening and about to happen right now.

we hit the 20 year mark. 

no, we haven't been married for that long, but we have been together for that long. we went on our first date 20 years ago. 

november 3, 2002.

2002!! an actual lifetime ago. 

a couple of weeks before we went on our first date i got introduced to the majority of peter's family at a men's college soccer game by his cousin who was more of an acquaintance than a full-fledged friend then. {peter and his cousin nathan were both playing in said game.} and when i say the majority of his family, i mean: his mom, sister, brother, {in an unexpected and random occurrence i had already met his dad,} grandparents, an aunt, and an uncle.

so, you know, just a few people. 

and i had only met peter himself once or maybe twice at that time. but a few weeks later we went on our first date. and 20 years later, here we are. 

a lot can happen in 20 years. and there are many "crazy parts" about this. because i've reflected on a lot of things over the last few weeks thinking about our full history. thinking about our relationship being as old as a college student. thinking about who we were then and who we are now and all of the things that have stayed the same, and the many more that have changed. 

but one thing that has changed still has me processing because it just happened. it hit me in the gut this weekend. expected, but not expected right when it happened. and that is that we just lost his grandmother yesterday. 

the same gran that i met at that soccer game twenty years ago. the same one who welcomed me with open arms when peter and i were dating and danced with her husband of 56 years at our wedding three weeks before granddad succumbed to cancer. the woman whose middle name became our daughter's first name. the one who set the bar and the standard across the board. the one who was a true example of what it means to put God first in your life and your marriage, and that women can and should be just as capable and sharp as their husbands. 

she was one of the women who showed me what it meant to continue to unapologetically hold high standards for yourself and for others. 

she told me once or twice that peter reminded her most of granddad. and honestly? that always intimidated me because in my mind that meant i needed to live up to her. and those are some big shoes to fill. 

i remember just sitting with her for a little while at granddad's wake - feeling like a fish out of water since peter and i were basically as newlywed as newlyweds can get - and just holding her hand. i didn't know what else to do. but she let me be in that space even as she mourned. 

{not the first time, but one of my favorites nonetheless}

i'll never forget the look on her face when she met adele - the oldest of her namesake great-granddaughters. i loved listening to her tell stories about granddad. one of my favorites was the time she wanted to look nice for him when he came back from deployment so she went and bought herself a dior suit. a dior suit! high standards, i tell you. she laughed so hard when she talked about his response to the money she spent on that suit, but i always loved that story. 

how the two of them held each other up. how she held up the family when he was gone in korea and vietnam. and how he was the same kind of rock for his family that his grandson is to mine today.

she would've been 99 in january. 

she buried her husband, her sister, one daughter, and countless friends. she left seven grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren. the last couple of years we were mostly shielded from her hardest days because she always perked up when the great-grands came to visit. she loved playing games with them, and in her later days she seemed to just enjoy watching them as she ate her nightly bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. 

because at some point she started giving the side-eye to anyone who would withhold her ice cream from her. i guess she figured that since she made it to her nineties she was going to be okay with eating a bowl of ice cream every day and not worrying about it. 

gran taught me a lot over the last 20 years. and looking back on it now, i also know that there's a lot i took for granted. because when someone loves you as close to unconditionally as you can get on this earth, we tend to take it for granted at some point. 

but she was a gem. 

and i miss her.

and i'm sure i always will. 

i thank God that she is fully healed and whole, walking - and maybe even golfing - in glory right now.

i thank God for the legacy that she and granddad left, and that my marriage is easier because of the example they set for their children and grandchildren. 

i thank God for her.

and i thank God for my husband. 

i thank God that 20 years ago he called me up and asked me to go see a movie with him.

xoxo