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Edith

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10983192_10153098520562235_1861972502914254373_nI thought my grandma would have lived to see me getting married. In some ways I thought she was “The Eternal Woman” and would outlive us all. How could she not? She was so vivacious, so curious, so independent. I never thought that cancer would have been the reason she had to leave so soon.

When I found out about the cancer, I didn’t think that it would kill her. Maybe I imagined some crazy death story about her riding a camel in the deserts of Egypt and getting kidnapped by gypsies, never to be seen again. Or maybe I just pictured her in her (much) older years, lying in her bed, telling us her final stories before she drifted away peacefully in the night.

What I didn’t imagine was holding her hand and kissing her forehead, whispering to her that it was okay to leave now, that all was at peace, and telling her that I loved her.

I miss her so much already.

She still had so much left to teach me. I only got 23 good years with her, and I’m selfish in saying that wasn’t enough. I’ll miss so much about my grandma. I’ll miss her smiling with a mouth full of food (gross, but also sweet). I’ll miss admiring how confident she was – not a shy bone in her body. I’ll miss her insanely good memory and her stories. I’ll miss her lack of filter, which may have embarrassed me at times (but also made me laugh.) I’ll miss her terrible driving. I’ll miss asking her to have dinner but not being able to find a free moment on her calendar – that woman was far more popular than me.

I’ll miss taking care of her.

I want to live my life the Edith way: Not Giving a Fuck. She did things her way – traveling the world into her 86th year of life, continuing to teach jewelry classes, and belonging to over 10 different clubs/groups/organizations that you could imagine. Sometimes I can barely get myself out of bed in the morning, but my grandma would never waste a day.

She will continue to be my source of inspiration, my best role model, and my hero for a very long time.

No One Likes You When You’re 23

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I know nothing particularly amazing and exciting is supposed to happen to you when you turn 23, but yet, I can’t wait for this year of 22 to be over. While it feels like just yesterday I was hopping around a bouncy house I rented for my birthday party (it was actually last year, I did that), so much has happened in a year it really hurts my brain to think about all of it. I fell in love, I fell out of love. I graduated college and traveled to Southeast Asia. I moved in with my grandma then moved out to SF. I got a job, then I got a new job. I had an apartment, then I didn’t have an apartment. Then suddenly, I felt the world become still for a moment – before it was flipped upside down again. Crazy when life’s a big bitch, right?

These past few months have knocked me off my feet, and not in a good way. After living with my grandma for two months this summer and having her routinely become such a big part in my life the last four years, I struggle every day with the thought that I will lose her. Not every day does someone get to say their kickass grandma has traveled the world at the ripe age of 86, or that she dreams about Costco hot dogs (they’re kosher) and In n Out milkshakes. It is hard to see an independent and strong-willed individual lose so much so quickly, and cancer is no softie. I have felt helpless at times watching her sick, but raising money is one way I feel like I can make a small difference.

I’m beyond lucky to have all that I have in life. At the end of each day, I know all that matters is that I have a full belly, a bed to sleep in, and people in my life who care about me. I’m constantly reminded of how loved I feel. This whirlwind of the year has been a lot for any one person to handle, and I know I could not do it on my own. For anyone who has dropped what they’re doing to hold me when I’m crying, walk around the block with me, feed me meals, allow me to feed them meals, scratch my back, or send me a card in the mail – you know who you are and I love you.

I don’t need any presents for my birthday, I already have everything I need. I’m ready for 23 to bring on newness – new health, new exciting adventures, new people. Maybe no one likes you when you’re 23, but who cares? 

Donate here: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/Events/BirthdayPages?pg=fund&fr_id=19690&pxfid=1767701

The Savers

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I come from a family of savers. Not to be closely confused with the saver’s first cousin, the hoarder. It’s a blessing and a curse to be an “accumulator.” It means keeping mementos you might stumble upon that can bring tears to your eyes. Or it can also mean opening up a closet of skeletons, or maybe, in the Sommer family, that closet is actually a cabinet full of soda cans from 1970 or a tin of cigarette ashes (yes, I have truly encountered this).

Edith is the Sommer champion of savers. In fact, one time this summer while I was living at her house, I bought Edith a new scrubbing brush for her dishes. Hers was clearly two years too old and past its scrubbing prime and was in desperate need of an upgrade. So I, being a normal sane human being, purchased a new one for approximately $1.99 and threw the old one away. I came back to the sink the next day, eager to try out my spiffy new brush, only to find the likes of the ghost of scrubber’s past BACK in the kitchen sink. “What is this doing here?!” I asked Edith. “Oh, you know me. I can never throw anything away,” she said. “No grandma. This is disgusting. I’m throwing it outside.” And I marched Mr. Scrubby out to the garbage never to be seen again.

I bring up saving for one particular reason. Saving is what we do in our family. For better or worse, it’s something I can’t get away from. I say that this trait gets a little better with every generation, but I can still be kind of a pack rat. While I may have gotten a bit of this habit from my grandma, I also inherited a lot of her other amazing traits: her independence, sense of adventure, and love of all things French. I’m so lucky to have such an inspiring 88-year old role model in my life, and it’s been a rough past few months seeing her lose a lot of important things in her life because of cancer.

For my birthday on January 21, 2015,  I want to help save something a little more meaningful. I’ve done this before and I want to do it again – raise money for the American Cancer Society. I have 23 days to raise $2,300 and I would be so so happy to achieve my goal instead of getting any gifts this year (my apartment is far too small for me to accept more crap). So, for you all-too-generous people in my life, help me donate to the ACS in honor of my grandma, Edith, and in memory of my uncle, Jeremy, who passed away in August 2013.

While my grandma has been getting stronger bit by bit every day, it still pains me to see cancer take away so much in such a short period of time. I say it all the time, but cancer really does suck.

Please visit my donation page here or let me know some other way if you would like to donate.

Donation page: http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/Events/BirthdayPages?pg=fund&fr_id=19690&pxfid=1767701

Sending you lots of love, health, and happiness for this New Year.

Sash

A Year in Review

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A year ago today, my uncle Jeremy passed away. This past weekend I had some time to myself and decided to visit Glide, remembering him and the time we spent there together. I imagined sitting in the pews with Jeremy as he was texting away on his phone with the font size big enough for an 80 year old to read from a mile away…

What I have struggled with the past year is coming to accept how much Jeremy influenced my life in such a short amount of time, yet the majority of my life I couldn’t quite define our relationship. Only in the past two years have I felt like Jeremy changed me and that so much of who I have become and the choices I have made have been because of him. Sometimes all I want to do is call him up and ask him for a great recipe or hear him yell “OF COURSE” to some idiot when they ask a dumb question. It would have been amazing to share with him my trip to Asia, where I got to see the orphanages he donated so much time and money to and had a dormitory built in my grandmother’s name. I felt more connected to him through that trip and feeling like I got to see a part of Jeremy even though he wasn’t there with me.

I wanted to give my grandma purple tulips today in honor and memory of Jeremy (but actually couldn’t find them at the store.) He planted them in spring of 2012 and got to see them bloom last April just a few months before he died. He wrote about them in his blog, commenting that when he was diagnosed with cancer he thought he may not live to see the spring, but when he noticed the purple tulips in the garden one day, he felt a sense of renewed hope, something these tulips have now come to symbolize for me. I try and look for hope in my own life and embody that spirit in the way Jeremy did with his cancer.

“The price of love is loss, but we still pay. We love anyway.”
-Next to Normal

The Broadway play Next to Normal was one of Jeremy’s favorites, I think he had seen it more than a dozen times. He wrote this quote in his blog one day and it has stuck with me since then. I think back to this often as I think of him, and what it means to lose someone you care about. So many people are afraid to feel the weight of sadness, and often times we suppress that to a point we can no longer ignore. To love is to truly embrace the possibility of loss, and guarding yourself against that loss ultimately keeps you from experiencing true love.

I am glad Jeremy left me with that.