I know a lot of you don’t read my personal blogs, but I know that sometimes Tumblr is the best way to get a message out to people I don’t catch online often.
Yesterday morning, my maternal grandmother died. I had spent Friday night and part of Saturday morning with my sisters up in Newburg and on our way back into town, we got a phone call from my dad. Grandma had passed away. While we have been expecting it for three years now, you can never really be prepared to get a phone call like that. Nicky was in hysterics right away because it’s been a month since she has been able to visit Grandma. She’s been working three jobs while attending school full time and what free time she normally gets, she spends commuting. It was a big shocker for me because I had spent last weekend with my grandparents. Grandma wanted a new pair of shoes so we went downtown to shop. We got her some shoes, I picked up a tea berry from a kitchen store downtown, and then we sat down to eat at a local seafood place. She, myself, and mom all had the same salad and had a pretty good talk. We went to her place and my mom and I just visited with them for a while. She seemed in higher spirits. The last time I saw my grandmother, she was shuffling down the hallway to join her friends for Bingo, laughing about a new dramafest over how many cards each lady at the Bingo table was allowed to.
I cried, but as CS Lewis mentioned, you can cry all you want but eventually you have to stop and eventually you have to face the problem. My mom would spend the day with my grandfather which left me home with my siblings. I called Mary, who is still out of town, to let her know and I started cleaning the house. Axel went out to take care of the back and front yards then his girlfriend came over and suggested that we get some new flowers for mom’s garden. Everyone pulled together to get things done and rather than sitting on the couch and weeping, we all pulled together to make one another smile, laugh, and to get the house in order for mom. Nicky couldn’t handle work yesterday but she managed to go in today. My co-workers have contacted me, offering condolences and offering to take my shifts if I need a day or so to get my head back. The support from everyone has been awesome.
Grandma M really was an amazing person. She was a nurse in her younger years and when she retired, she spent nearly all of her time making cross-stitch artwork and quilts for us. I still have two quilts that she made for me- one from when I was a baby and a large one that I got a decade ago. Both I know will become heirlooms. She did that until she had a stroke and lost feeling in her fingers. Another stroke took her sense of taste away. She wasn’t happy in her last years of life and she brushed shoulders with death so many times. She had heart surgery, hip problems, and a variety of other health problems that really dampened her outlook on life. But she has been attending church downtown and she was starting to smile more.
Now Grandpa is alone and outright miserable. His own health has been terrible and now his reason for living is gone. He has watched two of his sons pass away and now his wife. I can’t imagine how a father would feel having to bury most of his family before their time, and to then loose his wife would just be heart breaking. Mom will be doing some remodeling to get the downstairs livable for him. We’ll be taking out our study and putting in a guest bedroom downstairs and finishing the guest restroom down there as well.
In a nutshell, this means that life for the next few months will be very busy for me. I’m already cutting back on things that cause me stress so I can better cope with everything. Finals are next week and I’m not sure that I’m ready. I was hoping that Grandma would at least see me graduate but things don’t always happen the way we want them to. Spring break lasts a week and then, God willing, I start my final term at Chemeketa. If my grades are alright following finals. If not, then I’ll find another route to getting a career.
If you’re the praying sort, please keep my family in your prayers. My mother and grandfather especially, this has really been hard on them.