Saying Goodbye - Looking Back

My grandmother is dying.

My Nana suffers from Alzheimer’s which has gotten progressively worse over the years. On Thursday, I received a call from my family in Texas letting me know that the nursing home she was at called in my mother to let her know that her health was failing and that she needed to call in family to begin preparing. On Friday, she was sent to the hospital and placed in ICU after she began vomiting what appeared to be old blood. They found multiple blood clots, an ulcer in her stomach and other health issues based around her age and lack of movement. Last night they took her off the ventilator and moved her to a different floor of the hospital and called in palliative care to make her comfortable. She is still breathing on her own. Her heart is strong. But she won’t make it past this stage and the goal now is to make her comfortable until she passes on.

Nana meeting Snuggle Bug for the first time.

This woman is so much more than a grandmother to me. She has been like a mother. I was brought home from the hospital to her home. My family lived with her when I was a small child. She’d bake strawberry birthday cakes for me. She took me with her to bingo at the local VFW hall. I’ll never forget running to her car after school and going back to her house where she’d offer me cookies and I’d watch cartoons.

She was an independent woman who did things on her own. She raised her daughters on her own. She took care of her home and on her own. When she decided she wanted to do something, she did it on her own. She never asked for help because she never seemed to need it. She told you straight out what she was thinking, and you didn’t have to like it but that didn’t matter because she was honest. Maybe lacking in tact at moments but that was what made her so amazing.

Thanksgiving

I remember her home. The smells, the feelings and the memories. I remember her backyard. The large pecan tree that she’d send us out to gather pecans for pie. The clothes line where I’d stand between the wet sheets she’d hung and feel the breeze run through the fabric. The smell of the honeysuckle that grew on the fence and the rose bush at the back of the yard. I remember her kitchen where I stood on a step stool to hand wash dishes. The meals she made in that room after she’d light the stove. The tiny flowers I would bring to her that she’d put in a small vase on the windowsill. The smell of the Texas summer breeze that would come through the windows. The evenings spent watching Wheel of Fortune. The days spent jumping off the front porch, hanging from the hand rail and looking for the best chalk rock to draw on the sidewalk with.  She brought food when we were hungry and had nothing in the cabinets or refrigerator. She looked for me when I ran away from home. She dealt with my teenage attitude and still loved me, supported me and made sure I made it to the places I needed to go.  She was the first person to support me when I brought home the man who has been my husband for almost 14 years. When I called her as a young wife, living alone while my husband was gone for work, she explained to me how to start a lawn mower. She drove to my house in Kansas to meet Snuggle Bug a few weeks after she was born.

She taught me to cook. She taught me to clean. She taught me the value of making sure you always look presentable. She told me my tattoos were pretty, even though the rest of my family hated them. She taught me to be independent and to the freedom of a wild spirit that can’t be chained down.

She loves me. Even when the Alzheimer's had taken away her memory of me I'll never forget the last thing she said to me, "You're very pretty. The next time you come to visit me I'm going to buy you a sandwich." She liked me even when she no longer knew me. The gifts from having her in my life are more than I could ever write in this blog. They will stay with me until the day I die. I will forever be grateful for her.