this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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Thank you for your praise and understanding. My family and I do what we can to ensure she's comfortable and taken care of. Her husband, my grandpa, passed in '94. We like to joke that she sapped his life force in order to carry on. Sometimes she starts talking to us in Tagalog, but I'm a second gen half-breed who never learned the language outside of important food items. It's an adventure, if nothing else.
I'm Indigenous Canadian and I remember living with my 90 year grandfather in the 1980s ... he was an Ojibway/Cree hunter trapper who was born in the bush and lived on the land all his life and he was a first world war veteran (he never saw action but he was the first in our family to see Europe). He only spoke our language and knew just a few English words (which is amazing because he had been to England and back and never bothered to learn English). Our whole family spoke our language so we were freely able to listen to all his stories. We took lots of pictures back then but for some strange reason, we don't have many photos of him. We just took for granted that he was there and that someone, somewhere was taking pictures ... but it turned out that not enough people did.
I only remember bits and pieces because I was a wild kid that never sat at home ... now I just wish I had spent more time with him, taken photos and even video recorded him. I'll always remember him sitting outside our front door in the summer in his warm wool clothes soaking up the warm sun. We live in a cold part of the country so the sun and warmth were always important to him. He had so much history, so much information and so much to share ... I will forever feel bad about losing all that.
Which is why I want to say ... take lots of photos ... record a video ... record her voice, even if you don't understand ... record as much as possible and often ... those recordings, the pictures and the sounds will become precious memories you'll treasure for life. I remember what my grandfather sounded like ... but I just wish I could hear him again.
That is true for most of our pasts pre-smartphone. This is nowhere near as important as your grandfather, but I don't have any pictures of my first dog. I had her for 14 years and if I took any pictures of her, I've lost them. I can never see what she looked like again and every year, what she looked like fades a little more.
That's very kind and heartwarming to hear. Thankfully, my mother and other relatives are quite the archivists. There is no end to the pictures, scrapbooking, and a few series of videos about "adventures with GG." What she does try to get across, we listen. I'll hold onto what memories I can, as I have with my long-gone grandfather. Bit of a scoundrel and card shark, from what I've learned and remember. Had a regular game a couple nights a week (one of my uncles was an easy mark). Late dinners of excellent Filipino food GG prepared. Thank you for bringing up those memories.