An interlude with death

I'm on the road today. Left this morning for Sara's mom's and now we are off to her grandma's. She's not doing well. I absolutely hate this time of year. 15 years ago, during this time of year, my grandfather was dying. I have always been an unreasonable person. Years prior to my grandfather dying I had taken time to figure out what order I was comfortable with losing my grandparents. My aforementioned grandfather was the last one on the list, so naturally, he was the first to go. I was close with him. I spent every spring break and at least a week with him and my grandmother. I lived for these weeks because at least this way, I got a minimum of 2 weeks a YEAR where I was someone's special kid. He and I used to go for little car rides around the lake and once, when I was a teenager, he took me to a mall an hour away so that I could do girl things, like go to Claire's. Between he and my grandmother I got spoiled rotten during those weeks. I'm not talking about materially spoiled. I'm talking about emotionally. I got to play epic games of skip-bo and monopoly with grandma and I got to stay up curled up next to my grandpa watching crappy CBS dramas. I waited for the water tower light to come on with my grandpa. We would have smorgasbord lunches where we cleaned out the fridge and combined foods that had no business being combined. I was given memories that have been more precious than any thing I could have been handed. The only things I ever took from their house after they were gone were one of my grandpa's handkerchieves and the pink plastic loop I gave them when I was little. Backstory: I had a horrible habit of leaving things at their house. They would tease me and say it was just my way of making sure they knew I would be back. So one time when I was four, I made them a pink necklace and gave it to them so they always knew I would be back. Funny thing is, I couldn't take it out of the house. I couldn't do it, so my mother, in one of her true mom moments, brought it back to her house and hung it from her calendar (where they had hung it in their house). I have never reconciled the reversal of my list. Doesn't by any means mean that I don't like my surviving grandmother. I adore her, but she wasn't the same for me. I hate watching Sara go through this. It stirs up a lot of feelings that I have tried to stomp down, but worse, it's knowing that once your favorite grandparent is gone, it never stops hurting. It dulls, and you get used to it, but then something happens. You get married. You have a baby. You get divorced. You struggle. Any thing really. And there you are, wishing you could see them or talk to them. Back to the bargaining stage. It's unfair.