Memory Monday:

Like I told you last Monday I blamed myself for my grandmothers death. Which was silly. But that didn't change the fact that I did.

But why did I?

Now here is where it stops making sense (well...)

My one year younger cousin (the one I mentioned racing prior to my accidental swim in the pond...) was at my house. (She and her younger sister were staying with us for the weekend.) Now we were 11 and 10 so we figured that we could easily ride our bicycles to our grandparent’s house. Cause it wasn't more than 15 kilometers. So what would be the problem in that? Well according to my parents the problem was that we would have to drive along a road with a lot of cars. And I do mean a lot of cars. And trucks. So they told us no.

After making up an incredible fool proof plan (we were just 11 and 10....) we decided to go anyway.
So we told my sister (who is 3 years younger than I and therefore definitely not old enough to join us on our adventure....and we remembered to tell her exactly that...HUGE mistake...) that she was to give our parents a note after we left. (How very responsible of us). But not immediately after we left. She should count to 100 at least 50 times.

So off we went. And we did get as far as almost to the next town which was 7 kilometers away when my dad showed up in the car with the trailer. But since we didn't exactly look like we were exhausted we had to drive home on the bicycles ourselves while he followed us in the car. (Not sure that would work today. A man following two young girls on bicycles...).
But we were very exhausted when we got home. And although we didn't admit it (at least not at first) there were a lot of times on the way out where the cars didn't care about the two of us on bicycles so we had to drive off the road.

So we did learn a lesson.
Well two actually.

- Listen to your parents when they inform you about the dangers of riding a bicycle in the countryside.

- And don't tell your little sister that she can't join you because she's not old enough - she will rat you out! ;-)


But the short story long...

Because we never made it to our grandparents house - and because my grandmother had the stroke not long after our adventure - I blamed myself for years. Had I only made it to their house then maybe she would have lived. Or even better. She would never have had the stroke in the first place. As if my visit days prior to the stroke would have made a difference.

As I grew older I figured out that nothing could have changed the outcome of my grandmother’s stroke. I'm not even sure that it would have made a difference if it had happened today.