Not sure where that title just came from…just started typing it.
So I guess I will blog on about my good fortune. I am alive. I am somewhat healthy. I am married. I have children. I can occasionally muster a smile at myself in the mirror. I am alive.
I am also surrounded by many people who love me and adore me.
Maybe I am thinking all this after visiting with my beautiful 94 year old Grandmother today.
SHE has good fortune. Merely for the fact that she can say she lived 94 years…what a gift.
She has always been beautiful, and fun and silly, and loved to have a good time.
She is in the end stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s…not sure which…neither good.
But since it began to get progressively worse, I repeated these words countless times to anyone who would listen…
My grandmother has even more good fortune than SHE realizes…
Because she is BLISSFULLY UNAWARE.
She has never smiled so much as she has in the last few years. She can doze off or look around the room and gaze up at the same person, and it is as if she never saw this person, but still greets them with a beaming smile and a “come over here and give me a hug” gesture…
She is still her blissfully unaware self, but cannot make sentences and forgets most words…but still always smiling.
I love these visits with her, and pray I am blessed with such good fortune someday…to have produced a small army of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. To have been married only once to the love of her life. To still be stylish, and laugh and hug and say the most important words to her family as she grabs them tight in her arms…“I love you so much”…one of her only full sentences anymore…but that is MY good fortune…that she can tell me this…that she can tell my children this.
I am hopefully in the midst of building a life like Grandma did…
An adoring husband, who works hard and loves his family.
A growing business with more and more success each day.
Children and family that stand by me no matter what, good days and bad.
This is my good fortune…guess I had to write it down, to realize this…when and if I am so lucky to sit with my Grandmother again in the near future, I will tell her this…
That I love her and she is the luckiest woman I know…
Nothing better. Selfies with Gram…
Karma Is A Funny Thing 
Delightful article. It really hits home with me. My mother stayed sharp until her death, but Millie, my mother-in-law rapidly declined after her husband’s death. It was hard to watch her decline. Since I was her only daughter-in-law, she jokingly referred to me as her “favorite daughter-in-law.” As her memory failed I became a “very nice woman.” Her only son, Jack, was simply a man in the room and with her youngest daughter she recognized only her voice on the phone. Vicki came from Texas to spend some time with her mom, but Millie did not recognize her at all. Jack and I spent a weekend with her when Pat had to attend a conference. “Where’s Pat?” was the only thing Millie said all weekend. No sooner did you answer her then she was asking it again. Her familiar rock, stability was missing. We were strangers.
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Thank you for sharing your personal story and reading this. Such a difficult time…
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