Grandma

Grandma, Carter, and I on a post-dinner walk, laughing it up, the day before Easter

This is a long post. Because I need it to be.

As most of you know by now, my trip to Nebraska to attend my Grandpa's funeral didn't go as expected. We ended up having a joint funeral for both Grandpa and Grandma.

The memorial service for Grandpa was supposed to be on Easter Sunday. Grandma didn't come back from her walk. After several search parties, a police officer directed my uncle to the hospital, where a woman had been taken earlier that morning who matched Grandma's description. It was Grandma.

She had had a heart attack in the grocery store parking lot (she was planning on buying strawberries for our breakfast). Now, Grandma was insanely healthy - she hiked the Grand Canyon every year (and had a trip planned for this year) and rode her bike 5000-6000 miles every year (and she was 77...seriously...HEALTHY). There was nothing wrong with her heart...except she had just lost my Grandpa. Her heart literally broke. The attack was, in terms of heart attacks, a "minor" one, the doctors expected a full recovery. After some sad moments by Grandma's bedside as she expressed her desire to "be with Bob", she started rallying, talking, and joking...I chastised her for causing so much drama (don't worry, she laughed :) ). My siblings and I left the hospital shortly after 10pm on Easter to head back to our hotels. Each of us had had a conversation with Grandma, and told her goodnight. She and I shared some particularly sweet words.

At 1am, my phone rang. Grandma's pressures were dropping (she was DNR) and we needed to come to the hospital immediately. When I walked into her room, I wasn't sure I could stay there. She was hurting. The awesome nurses (really, incredibly kind and thoughtful staff) made her comfortable with some morphine, and we (my parents, siblings, aunt, uncles, and cousins) surrounded Grandma, holding her hands and patting her arms, telling her we loved her. And then she was gone. I've never seen someone die before.

Thus began a week of "someone pinch me because this can't be real".

It was pretty awful. Still is, truth be told.

I'm doing...okay. As my aunt put it, "we are all looking at what happened out of the corner of our eye...no one wants to stare it in the face". Well put. I am fully aware that I am in the whole pretending none of this happened, everything is still perfectly normal phase of grieving.

Still can't believe that the letter I received from them the day after Grandpa died is the last letter I will ever get from them (I've written them fairly regularly since I was 10 years old).

Words cannot sufficiently express how thankful I am that I had a good relationship with both Grandpa and Grandma. And that I got to spend the Saturday before Easter with her, laughing and talking. And that our last words together were so sweet.

• When I was little, I told Grandma I wanted to learn how to cook. She and Grandpa bought me The Joy of Cooking (yeah, a 700 page cooking book for an 8 year old :)...I still have and use it ). She then helped me plan a three course meal, helped me grocery shop for the ingredients, and then helped me prepare and serve it to my family and my Uncle Mike's family
  
• She taught me how to roll out the perfect pie crust
  
• I vividly recall her teaching me how to address an envelope
  
• She introduced me to the "The Pirates of Penzance" and organized plays for my cousins and I to act out for our families
• When I started learning Russian, she thought that was "cool" and learned along with me. We wrote letters to each other in Russian. It will be weird to go to Moscow this summer and not stop in a bookstore to buy some books to take back to her
• I showed up at their house three years ago during the Christmas holidays and asked her to teach me how to quilt. When I was at my uncle's house, I slept under the quilt that contained my first stitches ever quilted, stitched as she watched and instructed me
• Grandma and Grandpa loved to read. They volunteered at the local Book Barn in Tucson and would always have a pile of books to send home with me. Our letters were filled with different book recommendations
  

Grandma and I had a good thing between us and I am grateful to God for that...

Love you Grandma, and thank you for the memories.