Postcards from the Edge

I had a post planned about my touristy day yesterday, which I will eventually write once I upload my pictures from my camera, but I need to indulge in a somewhat personal interlude instead.

In said touristy day, I picked up a handful of postcards to send out to friends and family.  We've gone past the letter-writing phase of history, I'm afraid (barring a nice post-apocalyptic world without the interwebz), but I haven't given up on the humble postcard yet. I popped by Baker Street for the express purpose of picking up some Holmesian cards, and picked up a few double-decker bus-shaped cards for the 4-year-old boys in my life.  And for good measure, I bought a handful of the less-tacky (but still tacky) 30p each cards.

I unpacked my daybag this morning to survey my collection and decide who would get which card, when I got a bit of a lump in my throat.  You know the one.

I don't have grandparents anymore.

Lump gets bigger.  Face fills with water.

It is strange that something so small and menial can cause such a big wave of grief.

The last time I traveled abroad, I had two reasonably healthy grandparents to send postcards to.  The time before that, I had four.  Now I have none.  And something about not being able to send them a 4 by 6 card with something pretty on the front and something interesting on the back just makes me ache.  Mema would have kept it by her chair for ages, right by the TV flipper, her ancient phone, her latest Nora Roberts, and her address book.  Daddaddy would have kept it on the kitchen table for a time and would have informed visitors of its existence until it eventually became part of the outdated fridge landscape.

We lost Mema (my paternal grandmother) and Daddaddy (my maternal grandfather) last summer. For several reasons, not least of which was simply that they were the last to go, these losses were harder.  The sting wasn't lessened much by the fact that they had lived long, productive lives, punctuated by several hard years of widow(er)hood.  And I didn't have very much time to grieve.

I miss them terribly, especially when I'm at home in South Carolina, where, for the last six or seven years, our family's weekends (and many times weekdays) revolved around caring for grandparents--bringing meals, visiting at nursing homes, etc. I feel the absence of them more. Feel sadder. Wish that I had come by more often than I did on my short and infrequent visits from New York or Chicago.  But I don't usually miss them as much when I'm away.  I'm conditioned to long absences.  So I was somewhat sideswipped this morning with the realization that the only people in my life who I really needed to send a postcard to, to whom a postcard was more than a lark in a wired world, are no longer there to receive it.

Maybe I should write them one anyway.