Grandma Updates

Grandma Updates

July 29, 2003
I promised my Grandmother a few things when she died, first to make sure she 'looked ok' and that her 'eyebrows' were straight. (Those that don't know my grandmother's eyebrows were burnt off years ago and she always pencil's them on) and 2nd to have her 4 grandchildren be her pallbearers and walk her into church one last time.

Over the years the standing joke was "Gram I'm not doing that because I'll kill you if you die" As stupid as that is, it was the funniest thing to all of us.

In the past few months with her being sick, she was still a big part of my life. She knew everything that was going on, always did. Knew all about the drama of on line…didn't understand how the computer worked, but knew I had friends on the computer. She came to the office once, when I was chatting with my cousin Vinnie (yeah that makes me smile too) and she thought he could hear her when I was typing. So I was typing what she was saying and she was leaning over the computer looking at the screen and SCREAMING "Hi Vinnie", it was just so funny.

Watching her get so weak and little was breaking my heart. She was down to 70 lbs. You couldn't touch her or she would turn black and blue. This passed weekend, we knew it was the end. She stopped talking this week, and couldn't even open her eyes anymore. But my grandmother was an ox. The last thing she said was to my Uncle Vinnie on Wednesday night "I'm afraid to die". They stopped all the medications and her dialysis, then only had her on an IV drip of morphine.

Her blood pressure kept dropping, and my grandmother kept fighting. She didn't want to miss anything. Any day now my cousin (her niece) will be giving birth to her first child. Grandma said in March that she didn't want to miss that baby and she didn't want to miss me getting married. So she kept fighting.

Her blood pressure was zero over zero almost all day yesterday. And she continued to take one breath every minute or so. My cousin Chris said it was as if God said "come on Frances there are people waiting for you here" and grandma dropped to the floor kicking and screaming saying "I'm not going, I'm not done here"

According to my father, she was cold at 5pm yesterday, but they didn't call the time of death until 1:30 am. That gram of mine was just trying for one more day.

I ran around crazy yesterday going down to the hospital to be with Amy and I found that I couldn't sit still. As much as I wanted to be at the hospital I just as much wanted to be home. I made it home by 8pm to find out that my Uncle and father were at the hospital with her but none of us Grandchildren were. So we kinda just kept calling each other about every 15 minutes. During one of those calls, I found myself saying "I swear I'm just gonna kill her, why won't she let go" With that we all laughed. Funny how I was going to kill her if she died, now I was going to kill her because she wouldn't die.
All my grandparents have passed away on even numbered Mondays. I had no reason to think that grandma wouldn't do the same, but she's my grandma, she's the ox, she had to get another hour and half in just to be different.

I went to bed at midnight, but the phone kept ringing. Vinnie called again, then Chris, then finally Aunt Mer called at 2:30 to say it was official. I jumped out of bed, thinking, "Oh I better call Grandma and let her know" I wonder how long it is going to take for me to stop and remember I don't have my grandmother to call and tell everything too.

I sat up the rest of the night, playing backgammon, half expecting her to walk into my house, or at least call her name. I got nothing. I finally went to sleep when Ed left for work.

I woke up to a few emails only to find out that the reason I didn't 'hear' her last night was because she was busy 'talking' to another family member. I'm not posting that story, if you want the info, email me I'll send it. If you know how "witchy" we are you'll understand, if not it's just to leave it alone, because not everyone believes in ghosts.

It also seemed as if nobody knew what Grandma wanted to be buried in. So they called me to find out if I knew. That was one thing I didn't know. I knew she had a 'box" some where with everything in it, but nobody knew where that box was. My aunt settled on the dress she wore to a few of my cousin's weddings.

The wake is going to be Thursday and the Funeral Friday. I'm going early to make sure her eyebrows are straight then I'm going to sit in the back. I don't want to keep looking at her that way. I have a picture of us together on my desktop and that's the way I want to remember her.

Maria

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