Remember: “Enjoy the Little Things”
This Burlap canvas I painted on is one of my favorites and is hanging in my bedroom.
My sweet grandmother lost her husband, my grandfather, in January of 2014 due to very aggressive mouth cancer. That May, despite all the grieving, she took her first trip without her sweet husband to Wyoming to spend some time with her sisters. Along the way, she stopped at a Hobby Lobby craft store and picked out this beautiful burlap canvas just for me because she knew how much I painted. She told me to paint something I loved on it. Since I’ve never painted on burlap, I covered it with a few layers of white paint primer. I had no idea what I was going to do with it so I set it aside.
That was all the way back in May of 2014. Barely a month later in June of 2014, my grandmother was diagnosed with Stage 4 Glioblastoma, a very aggressive form of brain cancer. We were all shocked. We were still grieving the loss of our grandpa. She quickly had an operation to get the cancerous tumor removed, but the doctors couldn’t remove all of it and told her she only had a few moths to live. We were all devastated.
There was nothing that could be done treatment wise, so she went on the Hospice Care program. All that really could be done was to love, and be by her side with the little time she had left. The sicker she got, the more she had to stay in bed. Whenever I visited her, she would tell me stories about when she was a little girl, how she met my grandpa, vacations she went on, and many other sweet memories. One thing I remember very clearly one day when I was visiting with her, she said, “Remember to enjoy the little things because life goes by too quick.”
She passed away in her sleep on December 18th, 2014.
A little while after my grandma passed, I pulled out that burlap canvas that was collecting dust and knew exactly what was going on there. I never forgot those words she said. Both grandparents were taken from cancer in the same year. Although they aren’t around anymore, I know I will see them again someday. But for now I will continue to “Enjoy the Little Things” as often as possible.
Have any of you lost a loved one to cancer? Do you have a special memory of them? Let me know in the comments!
