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As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this year a veritable deluge of frozen precipitation has been graciously given to us New Englanders by the mighty meteorological powers that be. This generous gift has been received with welcoming, salted driveways, and our shovels runneth over. Though we trudge and toil, plow, blow, and scrape, I have rediscovered the necessity of enjoying the show once in a while, lest I forget the joys of whitewashing.

Last weekend, I gave the most precious gift I had to offer to an eager, snow-shocked Texan: her first sledding adventure.

Because I hadn’t had a good slide down a hill in maybe nine years, this excursion to the local golf course for some wintry wiping-out was atypical from the start. First off, I was driving; artfully maneuvering my snow-pantsed legs and booted feet to their correct clutch-and-gas positions proved about as difficult as I’d imagined, but luckily I stalled nary a time. Another major change from my tobogganing days of yore was that there were no parents to supervise me! Woohoo! If I wanted to try the side of the hill with lots of bumps and ramps, damnit I was going to try it. With a renewed sense of youthful freedom, my love and I grabbed our plastic disk sleds and began our ascent, gloved hand in gloved hand, to the first plateaued area of the course.

Being the veteran sledder between the two of us, it was decided that I be the first to go down the hill to illustrate the safety and the enjoyment of the experience. I was a bit hesitant to get started, since I had gained years of wisdom and experience since my last encounter with a slicked hill and recognized the potential dangers that only a preening preteen could pretend to ignore. Setting myself into place at the top of the slope, I dug the heels of my boots into the packed snow and stabilized myself enough to secure my path of motion. Once I felt relatively safe, I tucked my feet up onto the sled to sit cross-legged as I had already begun to creep forward. I careened full-speed down the hill, coming to rest a considerable distance from the starting point. In a response to my beckoning, my adorable novice came rushing toward me, her face nearly cleaved in two by her ebullient, toothy grin. After a brief, snowy snuggle, we marched back up the hill for another ride.

She set her path, grabbed her sled, and let herself be yanked down by the momentum. Once she was safely sitting still, I placed myself at the ready and gave myself over to gravity. Already, I started to see the treacherous frozen phantoms nudging me into the course where a rowdy bunch of teenagers had gleefully dug bumps and ramps into the formerly smooth slope. At that moment, I was torn between two possible courses of action, each with its own perils attached. With my body beginning to wobble and my sense of balance wrecked more by each rotation of the sled, I pictured (vividly and quickly) how redistributing my body weight could adversely affect the day’s fun and …my life.

Option one: I fall backward, causing the back of my sled to gouge its lip into the hard-packed surface of the snow and effectively catapulting myself ass-over-elbows and breaking my neck, the light in my eyes dimming before my lifeless body comes to a slushy stop half an acre from the base of the hill, widowing the once bright-eyed Texan and leaving her only two sleds, my corpse, and no fortitude to relearn the finer points of driving a car with a manual transmission. Option one wasn’t bringing me a lot of optimism.

Option two: I flop forward, slamming face-first into the rushing, wet, frozen ice-ground and crushing the bridge of my nose, transanguinating the breadth of the fairway, and frightening the on-looking children and setting into motion a series of events that would send them running into the arms of a therapist when they, in their mid-thirties, can’t even think of bringing their own kids sledding without succumbing to panic attacks and spontaneously assuming the fetal position. That wasn’t looking so bad for me, but with so many innocent victims, it would certainly be a tragedy fit for Oprah.

I didn’t exactly choose my next crucial movement so much as I slipped into it, but I felt myself tipping backward. Upon connecting with the sun-glazed tundra, I managed to instinctively curl my head in toward my chest as I made contact with the sandpapery snow and proceeded to scoop up several handfuls of the gritty stuff into the collar of my jacket, my sled having long-since jettisoned from underneath me to skip merrily along the path in a whizzing blue blur. After my disorientation dissipated and I was able to crane my neck enough to glance backward, I noticed my animated amiga was gaily laughing in my general direction. I waved, flopped back into my haphazard snow angel mess, and exhaled deeply before picking myself up and tracking down my runaway sled. We climbed the hill again, and again, and again, taking the snowy spray like champs until we couldn’t bear the thought of walking back one more time. Sated (and sweaty), we threw the sleds into my trunk and drove back home.

Unless each one of you is a crusty old adult, I whole-heartedly and most emphatically insist that you take even a scant few minutes to enjoy what’s good about winter. You’ve got a couple months to make your peace yet, since spring probably won’t begin to bud on the bare trees until April at least, but at all costs you’ve got to try to make winter into something other than a nuisance. Hell, about half the year is consumed by it, so you’re pretty much fucked if you don’t. So don’t be a weenie.

I don’t think I’ve ever been a person to have the most healthy or normal reactions to significant changes in my life. I shied from the responsibility of being 4 years old by requesting to have an un-birthday, I vandalized bits of my new house after moving out of the apartment my family had lived in for a few years, I’ve repeatedly punched the tile floor in my bedroom when I was angry, pawned or destroyed items that were given to me by an ex-boyfriend when things went really sour between us, and just been harmful to myself in general on several occasions.

My uncle just called my dad about 10 minutes ago, and after he hung up he told us “Mom’s dead.” My grandmother, Mimi, maybe the only person in my family I was ever truly honest with, just passed away. And the first thing I did after we all gave each other hugs was log into WordPress and start writing this. It’s a vast improvement considering what I sometimes do, but it’s unusual nonetheless. And even more unusual, I feel totally unaffected by it. And don’t start with the psychobabble about expressing grief and stuff, cuz I know it all and also know it’s wrong.

But I saw her today and she was all dehydrated and unresponsive and hopped up on morphine and all I could do was talk to her. I know that she’s been ready to go for a long time, so today, after everyone that was visiting had left, she went too. My dad left our house to pick up our uncle that lives the next neighborhood over and they’re going to be with the body until hospice does its thing. And I’m here, writin’ for The Tit.

She was a deeply religious woman since I’ve known her, so I know what she was waiting to happen and I have no worry for her. And I know the family knows she’s been waiting outside the gates of heaven and St. Peter’s just been like “I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list” for several months now. So she’s in the club gettin’ jiggy with Jesus and I’m pretty happy for her. And I know this sounds weird, but I was thinking–not 10 seconds before my dad got the call (no exaggeration whatsoever, I was in the kitchen making tea and walking back with it at the time)–that I hope she goes soon. We had all said our goodbyes, so why not? And sure enough… I don’t want to sound all insensitive or anything, but I’m glad it’s over. Waiting is the worst part of that sort of stuff, and I think that everyone was ready to let her go. I’m not sure where she is, but she’s not lingering in her earthly husk of a body any more.

I’m both sad and glad for my brother who opted to not see her today, because instead of seeing her all limp and doped up, he saw her all happy and smiling last Tuesday when we scraped together a flag ceremony to celebrate her time in the Army.

I doubt I’ll cry much or at all, and that if I do cry it’ll be during the services we have for her since there will be other criers around. She was a wonderful woman who served me as a fountain of advice and knowledge, who treated me and talked to me as an independant person and never as a child, and without whom I might possibly be a vastly different individual.

Nobody lives forever, so it doesn’t make sense for me to mourn the loss of someone who was ready and prepared to go. I know I’ll mourn more for the survivors, since not all of them will be as capable of rationalizing and coping as I believe I am. The burden of death is borne by the living, and when each of us dies it’s finally our turn to be free from the obligations. We just gotta buck up and keep plodding along.

I think I’m going to get back to playing WoW and not watching the rest of Ocean’s Eleven since neither of the others up here feel much like laughing at the moment. I don’t think there’s ever a time where it wouldn’t be advantageous to be in a good mood, so I’ll probably occupy myself with something cheery while I wait for them to cope. Grieving is a marathon, not a sprint.

I promise to write again soon. I’ve felt woefully bereft of my muse, so writing isn’t as easy as it was last semester. Maybe I ought to start taking weekly bus rides to get a periodic dose of crazy so I can start being productive again.

Until next time, folks.