It’s been just over a year now since we moved into our own house. (And since I left my jobs to take on contracts and stay home with our daughter). We’ve settled in, we’ve made changes, and finally this week we painted two more rooms – the master bath and the living room – bright beautiful colours that are mine.

I am so happy with the glorious yellow that I chose for the bathroom. One of my favourite things about this house is the tub in the master bath. The tub is large and allows me to sink right in and soak and read and relax. It also happens to have a window directly above it. There is a blind on the window but the light seeps through, and taking a bath at dusk is satisfying to my soul.

The colour – this orangey yellow called Calgary Sunset on the chip – fits perfectly with my sunset baths.

Our living room is now a beautiful bright blue that reminds me of the sunny beach that matches the picture above the mantel.

My free and wild little girl.

When we found the listing for this house it seemed too good to be true. When the open house fell on my birthday and the house lived up to expectations it felt like it was meant to be. Within a week we were signing all the papers. Now it’s been a year.

A first of 30.

I hope.

In my previous post I mentioned that I’m terrified of how I will react when we lose my grandfather. There is another reason for this, beyond his being one of the most important people in my life.

I haven’t experienced a lot of death in my life. I remember knowing my great-grandparents, and I remember being at a funeral when I was a kid. I knew my paternal grandmother, who died when I was 8 or 9 years old, but she had Alzheimer’s so I never really knew her and we never had the relationship I had with my maternal grandparents. My maternal grandmother died after years of Alzheimer’s too, and by the time her body passed I had already mourned her.

I have never had someone central in my life just pulled away from me in that one moment, and I don’t know what it will do to me.

I remember in 2007, the day London was bombed we didn’t know if my father was there or at home in Ottawa. My sister found his partner’s phone number in London and we found out quickly that she was fine and Dad was in Canada. My father and I have never had what I would consider a close relationship but the fear in that time of not knowing shocked me.

Meanwhile, my family has grown, I have a husband that I scared to lose, a daughter, a second set of parents, a whole new part of my family – aunts and uncles and a new set of grandparents that I adore.

Years ago I planned to be lonely. I was going to be a spinster, traveling the world, writing. Now I’ve surrounded myself with more people to love and be loved by, more people to lose.

It’s a ridiculous thing this heart.

My mother and father are both one of two kids in their family, and my Dad’s sister lives in Denmark, so I didn’t grow up around a lot of cousins.

BUT

My grandfather had two brothers and my grandmother was the oldest of seven and I always had great aunts and uncles in my life. The closest geographically were my grandfathers brothers, Uncle Paul and Aunt Judy in Peterborough, and Uncle Gilling and Aunt Lib in Almonte, Ontario. We lost Uncle Paul in 1998, and Aunt Judy too soon after. My grandmother died 10 years ago. Aunt Lib died in 2008.

Last week we lost Uncle Gilling.

He was 90. He had been sick, in the hospital. It was a shock but not a surprise if that makes any sense. We heard early Monday morning before I dropped the kid off at preschool that it wasn’t looking good, and he passed away before I went to pick her up.

She knew Uncle Gilling. We had visited him a few times, including a couple of weeks ago in the hospital. She had actually told me that she wanted to go back and visit him in the hospital again. He had taken in a cat that ended up having kittens and he let her play with the kittens, which was great since we can’t have a cat.

I have told her in the past that people have died. She asked what happened to my grandmother, I was honest and said she had died. We went to the memorial for Jack on the Hill and she asked me where Jack was and I told her he had died – but she’s never asked follow up questions. It’s never been someone that she was aware of before they died.

When I picked her up I told her. I asked if she remembered visiting Uncle Gilling in the hospital and if she remembered that he was sick, and when she said yes, I told her that he had died.

She continued on with whatever she had been wanting to tell me.

A little later, in the car and driving home, she asked me why. That was more of a struggle. I told her that it’s the way life works – we’re born, we live a life and we die. It’s the way it’s always been.

She hasn’t asked me again, but I know it will come. My grandfather is 93 years old. I am thrilled that they have been able to share enough time together that she will remember him as she grows up and he is gone, but I live in fear of how I am going to react when we do lose him. How will I be able to explain how sad I am to her? How will I explain why something that is part of nature is still so hard to accept?

Going through my Google Reader (not letting go until they make me), I landed on this post which asked a question that struck me: What do you know for sure?

Before getting any further into the post, the answer jumped right into my head.

What do I know for sure? That I love my daughter with my whole heart and I believe she can do anything. Any dream she has I will encourage her to pursue. I want her to be passionate about something.

That is what I know.

Carrying on with the post, I realize that this is supposed to be about ME. What do I know for sure about me? What have I known since childhood? What has always been consistent?

I am a writer. I have been a writer in many different formats, for just me and for an audience. I have a drive to be creative that has pushed me in different directions but has always been there. I know for sure that I have a special relationship with words, that my brain creates stories.

Now at 32 I have two passions – I love words and I love my child. These are the things that I will never be separated from.

These are the things that fill my heart. That is the beauty in the world.