no possessions

my grandma, the subject of an early january post, passed two days ago.

my mom called to tell me while I was cashiering. I knew the call was coming, but that didn't make it any less of an awkward moment. I honestly didn't think it would come when it did... but I also gave her the number to whole foods because I didn't want it left as a voicemail on my phone. I blew my nose in the bathroom, checked out one more order, and was sent home. and I was grateful, because no one wants to be the puffy-eyed check-out girl...

the thing is, my entire family knew that call was coming. today, however, I'm just shocked at how some of us have prepared to deal with it, and how some of us are dealing with it.

I am twenty-seven. this weekend will be my first real funeral. I will sit next to my mom and brother, I will not understand half of the service due to it being said in latvian. I will tune out of the rest of it as I sit and think about how awful some members of my family are choosing to behave about certain possessions of my grandmother's - and how they are "supposed" to be divided, sold, or thrown away.

my heart and my brain hurt when I think: is that all it comes to in the end? is that all she will be remembered with or for? with jewelry, couches, pictures, and vases, all given priority because of some possessive value? does the value of her life, as she lived it, and its contributions to the world show through these things? or will it just be up to us to remember that?

needless to say, I don't want to go home this weekend. but I will, I will.

great expectations

per a recent 60 Minutes, and per a few studies done yearly by some researcher in europe, denmark is again the world's happiest country. according to bits and pieces of this research, and some danish popular opinions, this is because

• a) the country is small, and having a smaller community creates more unity and therefore a sense of belonging among its inhabitants.


• b) they have much lower expectations about life and are therefore happier with what they get when they get it.


• c) they kicked major ass at some european soccer tournament back in the 1990's and are still revelling in that glory.

while I'll be the first to admit the importance of the other two major points, I'm here today, kids, to talk to you about b).

I can remember my mother screaming at me from across the kitchen during one of many of our fights when I was in high school: you're a snob, kerrie lynne! a pure snob! I have no recollection of the exact cause of the fight or the rest of the content of our banter, but I know, as you now do, that that one point stuck with me hard and fast. it stuck all this time because, as I knew it then, she was right: I have always been a snob. since I can remember having conscious thought, something deep within me has always turned its nose up on the "wrong" things, and assumed that others have the same high expectations of me, themselves, and the world.

I never had the money, or the family upbringing, or the material possessions, or even the knowledge and social prowess to be able to be quite the snob I always wanted to be. but I emulated the hell out of them. and somewhere it worked, at least in some way. I clearly remember the day a supervisor of mine, who obviously had a similar style of emulating others, said to me, kerrie, do you come from money? because you reek of it. (no joke!) in a split second I was both: slightly happy that someone finally noticed my emulated style; and slightly disgusted with myself for trying to be some snobby-but-compassionate vegan-hipster social work student, for being the confused and somewhat fake paradox I'd become.

I believe that to be the moment that started the line of thinking that got me to where I am today. that was the moment when I realized that while most of interaction is perception, I wasn't happy with the perception I was presenting others - nor was I happy with the perceptions (and assumptions, and therefore, expectations) I had of other people. that was the moment when I figured out that I needed a new way of looking at how I interacted with the world in this way.

it's not that I want to be happy with just anything, but I got to thinking: wouldn't it be nice if I could think of everything as an unexpected present from the universe? if, instead of going by precidents, or expecting certain patterns of behavior from others, I was just happy when the good part of the pattern happened, no matter how often it did? wouldn't it be nice if I could celebrate little accomplishments, no matter how little, as long as they made someone feel good?

as one of my first blogs stated, I have become a much more open person in the last 20 months than I'd ever hoped to be. maintaining that openness along with a sense of hope does not equal lowered expectations in anyway, but I have learned to adjust my expectations. many of you have heard stories of my supervisor at WU, whom I most often portray as prissy and demanding. last week I noticed a post-it note that she had neatly tacked up above her phone: see the world as it is, not as you would have it.

I thought, oh shit, other people stress about expectations, too. and then I thought, that's totally right! when I gave my general new year's resolution as a half-joking "to just be," somewhere inside of me I was hoping for a way to express that I was tired of having grandiose expectations of myself and others, and I'm tired of other people expecting me to be that way.

I have consciously been trying out this "lowering" of my own expectations... and I'm enjoying myself. sure, there's still a little voice inside of me that wants to point out the small quirks and faults, that wants to be upset when certain things aren't done, but it's a small voice. a small voice that is easily drowned out by the strange calm-but-excited hum I get in my head when I smile at all of my little celebrations instead of scoffing at them.

I truly believe that somewhere in each of us is the ability to become more patient, more understanding, and less expecting. how these interplay for us personally, how they come about and manifest, is up to us and up to how our lives unroll. but the point is that we all have the opportunity to be the happiest entity on the planet, the denmark of human beings, and I think we should take it.

save the date

we have 365+ delineated opportunities each year to make a day worth remembering... a day worth marking in our calendars for future reference. a good percentage of the days of the year do not fall into this category. sure, minor memorable events happen on them, but it's not like I'll take a sharpie to my wall calendar about them or write them up in a journal. most days are just days: they may be important to somebody somewhere, but without the marker of a birthday, anniversary, or other holiday, they are just not that important.

until yesterday morning, the sixth of february was just that: another day. sure, it was stout's birthday. and I love him as I should love an older brother. so I guess it wasn't just "another day;" it was more like it was another one of my friend's lovely birthdays, which is a positive association. as of 6:46a, however, that positive association was mildly usurped by this: the slightly less expected passing of my favorite grandparent, my dad's dad, my paw paw.

I say that the whole thing was "slightly less expected" to indicate that I expected my mom's mom to go first, since she was, as mentioned in the previous blog, in and out of the hospital last month. but grandma irene is, as of last notice, okay. not well, not getting any better, but okay.

it's just funny to think: I'd been through twenty-seven february 6th's before. very few of them probably meant anything beyond the due-date of an assignment, a shift I might have worked, a sorority event attended, or another day crossed off on the way to some other important date. and for many people, yesterday remained just another day.

much like the inherent inability of people to witness the amazing potential of the people in front of them, there is also the inability to see the hidden circumstances behind others' attitudes at any particular time. ninety percent of the people with whom I interacted yesterday had absolutely no idea, and probably no interest in the fact, that I'd just lost one of the people I admired most in my life. the ins-and-outs of their own markers for the day, whether of major or minor life-importance, weighed more heavily in their mind and in their adjustment to interactions than my markers ever could or would. but just being aware of the fact that you have no idea what has happened to someone in the last 24 hours, let alone across the span of their life, makes you a much more understanding person in my opinion. or, at the very least, more open to the possibility that people are floating through life much as you are: trying to make it day-to-day, without promise of anything more concrete than just trying to survive.