So I suppose this post is rather personal and important to me so I want to share it with you.
A little over two years ago my grandmother on my mothers side was diagnosed with lung cancer. Growing up, my sisters and I didn't get to see my grandparents on that side very often since they lived in another province about 12 hours away so we only got to see them maybe twice a year. Once at Christmas and once in the summer. My grandmother was probably the strongest, although crazy in her approach sometimes, woman that I've ever met. And despite our little rough patches that we've had over the years, she gave me amazing opportunities and opened the world up for me.
She took me on my first big adventure when I was 13 years old to Ixtapa, Mexico. First time I've ever been out of Canada and since then I vowed to go somewhere new every year. Which I did. I've been all over the States, Europe, Japan.. back to Mexico again. I got a bad case of the wanderlust after that. Of course that slowed down once I got married and had a kid and put my money into the house and bills and things instead of travel and experiences. But we all know that wanderlust never really goes away. While she was traditional in her ways, she was always thinking, always learning, always experiencing something. And I'll be forever thankful that at least once she decided to take me on that adventure with her because she opened my eyes to bigger things. That the world is bigger than Stony Plain or bigger than Alberta or the places that I knew. She was an impressive lady. Her and my grandfather built businesses from the ground up starting with nothing, worked the real-estate industry to buy and flip houses and buildings, pretty much owned the entire town she lived in and she's seen the entire world multiple times over. All on top of having three kids, nine grandchildren and like 15 great grandchildren.
But back to the story. She was diagnosed with lung cancer and for the first time in my life I saw the strongest woman, broken. She was a mess, she was terrified. This woman who had always been so hard and tough, was petrified at the notion that she might die and leave her family behind. Her legacy would be without her.
My grandmother also liked to paint, scenery mostly, it was what she did in her spare time. What she enjoyed to do for relaxation. So I drew her this picture. She was never really into my fantasy art or anime or comic book characters. But her favourite animal was always the eagle. So we were invited out to her place in the summer of 2015 for a celebration of life while she was still alive and I gave this to her there. I called this digital painting "The Strength of the Universe" and wrote an inspirational speech on the back that I can't remember off the top of my head. But the gist of it was that we all have the strength of the universe inside of us, that we are made of the same stardust that the universe consists of. And humans have a knack for overcoming great adversity if they believe that they can, or if they want it bad enough. That drive is what keeps us going. People have beaten cancer before just because they had the will to live. So I hoped that I would inspire her to keep that will alive as well.
She ended up going into remission, even though she only had a 25% chance of surviving the chemo treatment she went in there and she did it and she went into remission. Which was amazing! She was cancer free for another year until the fall of last year the cancer came back, this time in the form of a tumor in her brain in which she did not survive, passing away in January of this year. But man, did she live one hell of a life. To the fullest, is an understatement. She conquered life.
And now my family always thinks of her whenever they see an eagle. Believing that she was reincarnated as the animal she admired and compared herself to most.