Life and Loss

"Life is eternal, and love is immortal,
and death is only a horizon;
and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

~Rossiter Worthington Raymond~

Hello everyone.  My grandmother Catherine passed away last week, she was my paternal grandmother and I was named after her and my mother's sister (Katherine).  Unlike my maternal grandmother, who we've always called abuela (Spanish for grandmother), we called my father's mother Amatchi, pronounced a-ma-chi,  which is the Basque word for grandmother.  She was born in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in southwestern France, which is also part of the Basque province, thus near the Spanish border.  She had strong passions and entrepreneurial drive (that's where I get it from!), in fact, in her younger adult years she owned a hat shop in France!  How swanky, haha.  Our Amatchi loved to sing and dance, and she was a real romantic at heart - the biggest! She once had a great romance with a Mexican Bullfighter that was touring Spain and then, many years later met and fell in love with my grandfather, a Basque Spaniard and wonderful artist, and Jai-Alai player! Soon after they married and honeymooned in Spain, the Spanish Civil War broke out and they made the decision to move to Mexico, and it was there that my aunt, my father, and my uncle were born. Soon after the birth of my uncle (the youngest), they all moved to upstate New York for several years, and then down here to Miami, FL for the warmer weather.  Actually, they moved to my mother's childhood neighborhood, on the opposite side of her block!  That's a story for another day...  :) 

My grandmother survived my grandfather (he passed long before I was born) and my father, so I know that she really lived through her share of heartaches and losses.  My father passed away on a family vacation several years ago from a fatal heart attack, it was horrible and tragic for our family.  I wish he could have lived a long life too, and I know that everyone was thinking of him that day, as we do every day, because he was taken from us too soon in life.  Despite the pain of losing them both, I am happy that they can be together again, wherever they are.  I know that my father, my grandmother, my grandfather and all of the other family members we've lost along the generations are having a good'ol time eating pan con Chorizo, drinking wine, and singing like Mariachis!

Our Amatchi was mother, grandmother, and great grandmother to many, she will always be loved and remembered.

My mother and father with my grandmother "Amatchi" at our Noche Buena dinner for Christmas Eve many years ago.

Apart from this family loss, I've also been caught in a web of Sociology quizzes and readings, torturous Math homework and tests (yes, another one, I'll spare you the gory and disappointing details), and various craft and garden projects. I'm all over the place people, someone grab me and yank me back down to Earth! I have a trillion photos of everything from Goodwill finds to garden images (yes, Cactus Corner is almost ready - it's a beast of a post!) to fabric and sewing projects and more! Once my head stops spinning from sorting through the consequences of my compulsive image taking I will have a post for you all.

In the meantime, have a wonderful day!

(All images in this post are my personal photographs.)