She would have been 99 today ...

This was probably the last visit in which she recognized us ...

    She died March 7, 2010, just one week before her 98th birthday.

She took with her the secrets that made her bitter. I know she held the truth that might have let us all understand better what made her tick so loudly. She was absolutely silent for years before we ever heard inklings that there were a number of indiscretions by my grandfather ... it was only after the walls that she had so securely erected began to erode as disease wore away the foundtion of her mind. And then there were such holes that it all seemed impossible to believe. We were stunned and wounded and what we believed ... well, it was marred.

I pray that she is in Heaven and that Jesus is holding her close and none of it matters anymore. That on this birthday, she knows that He is glad she was born! That she can be happy that not only she was born, but that every one of her children were born. That she is aware that her grandchildren loved her-and even if she couldn't say it outloud- she loved us too. 

I pray that today her absolute need to be chosen, the favorite, the most special has been fulfilled, knowing that in His heart, He chose her!! That while we wore out in our ability to reassure her that she was the the grandma we loved, that we loved her as much as we did Grandpa ... that amidst her decision that she couldn't love some of us because we were Grandpa's favorites ... that love is limitless, it is a lie that you can only love so much and then you run out ...

inequity hurts.

It never feels good.

It never evens out a wrong.  

Even if you think you are making up for someone else's choice ... 

your inequity does damage in exactly the way you are trying to right.

I have watched my mother and my aunt suffer the most.

Today I pray that they can forgive. That they can let go of the dream that they would be chosen by her, that they would be enough for her ...

and they will hold on to the fact that they are loved by the Father.