*********** Nan ************

May 10,1899

August 29.1998

Born on May the tenth, in the year of eighteen ninety nine, Mary Kicak entered this World via Poland. It is hard for me to imagine Nan as a newborn baby, but she was, just like we all were. Not even the airplane had been invented yet.

By the time she was six years of age, she had been to Canada and back to Poland. Missing the sailing of the Titanic by hours, she returned to Winnipeg Canada where she experienced World War One as a young teen. She lived through the roaring twenties in her twenties, and the dirty thirties with The Great Depression when she was thirty, World War Two when she was forty, the fifties, the roaring sixties, the hippie seventies, the eighties and right up to here in the nineties

Nan will always the biggest single positive force in our entire family. She was a full time life long baby-sitter, our own real Life Guardian Angel.

This extraordinary person was the kind of friend who you could call at any time in the day or the middle of the night and she would always come and be there for any of us.

On countless occasions, we would call her and she would come and give us a ride home from anywhere we were. She would put her coat over her nightdress, get into her car and fetch us without exception. Never ever was she too busy with anything, not to come and give any of us a safe ride home.

This kindly Lady was popular with all of our friends from childhood to today. They have all met and talked with Nan. Because she was just always right there when we needed someone. Everyone should have a GrandMother just like Nan.

Her Life was very difficult raising four children as a single parent in those early days. She had two boys, and two girls. The two girls, one of whom was my Mom, would die from cancer when Nan was seventy eight.

A few years later her son Joseph would also die, of a heart attack.

But Nan kept it all together. She raised her four children, and went on to raise her children's children. She was the kind of person who was just always there no matter what went down. Absolutely always.

This year, when she turned ninety nine, she was just as feisty as ever, except she now needed a wheel chair to get around.

A couple of days ago, her health care worker called to say that Nan was having a little trouble breathing. I know that she takes medicine for asthma, so I called my sister Darlene, and we went to pay her a visit.

To be safe, I called her doctor, and had a chat with her. Nan doesn't like medical people, and she doesn't like the medicine they give her much more.

The doctor said that she would prescribe a 'puffer' as they are called, and I could go and pick it up at the pharmacy. She also said that because of one of the medications that Nan was taking, she should have a doctor look at her lungs.

So Darlene and I packed Nan's wheelchair in the trunk of the car, and took Nan to the hospital. She really doesn't like hospitals at all.

So when they told us to take a chair in the waiting room, it was not easy to keep Nan smiling. She wanted to go home and that was that.

Two hours later, we were still waiting to get someone to look at her. I had taken her outside into the evening air. It was such a gorgeous night. It was a magical kind of balmy evening, and hard not to be swept away by Nature's absolute beauty and splendor.

There was a gentle warm breeze in the air, and huge cloud formations formed in the sky. Many times Darlene or I would point to a powerful dramatic cloud that was forming in the late night sky. Every few minutes a bolt of lightning would flash in the distance. Things were definitely happening up there.

I wondered how Nan might feel, being ninety-nine and all, and sitting there in her wheelchair on the lawn watching the cars buzzing by. Long tongues of lightning reached incredible lengths snaking through those giant rolling cloud formations. I wondered if Nan might feel happy to be alive, and be happy to see such a display of Nature in action, or was she just annoyed with the passing hours.

The lightning would zig zag right across the complete horizon, wait a minute or so, and then do it again, and again, and again.

At first I thought I noticed something, like a drop of moisture, and then it was there for sure. And then another, and another. It was about to rain.

I wheeled Nan off the lawn, down the sidewalk, back up the ramp past the ambulance bay, and back into the hospital waiting room.

We would be sitting there yet another hour. Nan thought that we should forget about all this, and just take her home. I kept telling her that we needed to be sure that she was okay. She was not a happy camper.

So what do you do ? Keep her there and wait for the doctor, or do what she wants to do, and take her home.

There used to be a time when no one pushed Nan around.

Back in the dirty thirties, when her four children were just hungry kids in the midst of the Great Depression, and no one could get a job, and there was no such thing as welfare, Nan did what she had to do to keep her children in school, and food on the table.

Nan, as a single parent, had to carry the load by herself, sometimes doing heavy labor, like moving heavy things such as railway ties. You get to be strong in times like that. Standing less than five feet tall, pound for pound, this slim little Lady always got the job done.

As a Mother, realizing that family comes first, and that that is the most important thing in Life, she kept it all together no matter what.

Now, here she was, this irreplaceable Lady, waiting in the hallway of the hospital, wanting to go home, and being told 'no', that we had to wait for a doctor to see her.

I must say that the temptation was there. I would have Loved to just roll Nan back out into the car, and get her back home so she could go to bed.

I couldn't help but look into her weathered face, and wonder how this slim woman, less than five feet tall, managed to live through so much, and still be here with us today.

Now I wondered if I was doing all that I could, to help her in her time of need. This very grand old Great-Great-GrandMother was surrounded by descendents, yet she was so very much alone.

Back when we were just kids she always , always, always, had a twenty-five cent piece for us. Every single time we went to visit her, we got a quarter. And a quarter then wasn't the thing a quarter is today. You could buy things with a quarter then. Like a fishing lure, for instance, or a gallon of gasoline.

Every once in a rare while, like every fifth New Year or something like that, Nan would have a sip of straight whiskey. But never more than a sip.

She could mix with paupers or Kings. Nan was just a very nice likeable person. In all my Life I have never seen Nan angry at me. Well except once, when she said I was wasting my Life and threw her tea cup on the floor. I was thirty five at the time.

She got angry at some of the things I did frequently enough, but only that one time did she get really angry with me. Never when we were small children, did she ever spank or hit us. She was one grand Mother, full of all kinds of class, and more Love than enough, to go around.

And here she was, ninety nine years old, sitting in her wheelchair in a hospital hallway, getting upset because she wanted to go home.

It was getting on to midnight when the nurse came looking for us. Nan was asleep in her wheelchair, Darlene and I were passing the time, talking about things.

Again, I assured Nan that we would be taking her home, right after the doctor saw her.

Another half hour or so passed, they said one of us could visit with Nan. Darlene was there before we could decide which one of us that would be. By midnight, they had made the decision that Nan should be held overnight for observation.

Well, Nan was having none of that. She wanted to go home and nothing short of that would do. I gave it my best shot and tried to explain to her that it was lucky we brought her down here because the doctor said her blood pressure was low, and she had a pnemonia type infection in her lungs, and that she should at the very least, stay the night.

"I want to go home !" she said when I finished trying to explain it all to her.

"They don't know what they are doing !" she added.

Well, we were many, and she was but one feisty, ninety-nine year old Lady. So we prevailed, and Nan stayed overnight. Darlene and I would be back in the morning, to take her home.

We had been there now for some four long hours, and everyone needed to go home and get some sleep. Except Nan, of course, exhausted from this ordeal, she could go straight to sleep.

The following morning,which was August the twenty-fifth, Darlene and I were there again, listening to the medical people saying that they wanted to keep her another 5 days.

Well try telling that to Nan. She wanted to go home. When she set her determined mind to anything, it was sometimes easier to move a mountain, than to get Nan to change her mind.

But she was ninety-nine, and we were many. Her blood pressure was low because she was dehydrated, and she had an infection in her lungs. They said they wanted to keep her on an intravenous drip to get her fluids and pressure back up. She could go home in five days and take the rest of her antibiotic medication at home.

Today is Saturday, and today is the day she went home.

My sister called me at eight-thirty this morning to say that Nan's condition had deteriorated rapidly over the past twelve hours and should I come to the hospital immediately. I notified brother Charles and Richard.

Twenty-five minutes later I got another call saying that Nan was not expected to live through the day, and I should come directly. Again I made a few phone calls.

As I was walking out the door, the phone rang again.

It was Darlene saying that Nan had slipped away to be with the Angels.

Ninety-nine years of Devotion, had come to an end.

And Nan has finally come home. Home to where her two daughters and son wait for her with welcoming outstretched arms. Her Mother, and Father, two wonderful people who brought Nan into this World, wait there too. And Nan has gone home to be with them.

It is with very mixed feelings that I think that in one way, she has found Eternal Peace, free from the aches and pains of being around for the past Century.

On the other hand, she leaves us behind, and we feel her great loss. You know the last living memory was at the hospital, when I was saying good-bye to Nan, and I promised her, that in five days, she was going home.... and she smiled and waved. I will always remember Nan that way, and I am extremely thankful for that.

**************

Dearest Nan, we are all missing you.

Our loss, is Heaven's gain.

I know you will be watching over us,

like you have done throughout all our Lives.

And I know that there will be that day which will come,

when we too will be coming home to Eternal Peace,

and be at one with you again.

So please understand why we weep so,

you will Live Forever in our minds,

and that presence will always be that guiding light that you have been to all who knew you.

I can see you in my children's faces, and I will look for you in their children's faces.

You will live forever Dearest Nan, in the bodies and souls of your descendents forever.

All of us will pick up the fragments of your song, to sing a finer melody. You gave us so much of your Life, so we in turn, can give much of our lives to others.

Thank you Nan, for giving us so much of your of yourself.

Thank you Nan, for being the brightness in the darkest moments of our lives.

Only now do we truly appreciate what we are now without, and we want you to know that Life without you is very, very difficult.

The security of knowing that no matter what, you would always be there for us, is no longer.

Only the strength of the message you gave us through the years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.

We miss your wonderful sense of humor, your joy of Life wherever you took your smile, the unforgettable sparkle in your eyes, and your boundless energy.

You are the essence of Motherhood and we Love you.

Good bye Dearest Nan, until we meet again, in that day where there is no sunset, and no dawning.

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Somewhere in the distant Heavens, a new star shines brightly.

It is Nan, looking after Heaven's children.

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