Late July Grammie started to get worse. It was getting harder and harder for me to go and visit her because I did not like seeing her like this but I did it for her. It was really hard not to cry when I was there. I held it together when I was with her and cried my eyes out when I walked back to the Escape in the parking lot. I told her stories about what I was doing, my job...basically anything I could think of so she didn't have to talk very much. It was getting harder and harder for her to talk as the days went on. The stroke had made the lung problem worse since she couldn't move her left side very well. This was literally killing me and I felt so hopeless and dejected.
The last time she was awake and talking, this was before she moved down to the lower floors of the hospital, she told me that I was her precious granddaughter and that she loved me so much. I told her I loved her and gave her a hug before I left, she told me to pray for her. I did every night before I went to bed. The nurses needed to come in and change the bed, change the IV's and give her dinner.
On Monday, dad had told us that Grammie was being moved to a different floor. Since May and when this awful experience began, Grammie has been to the hospital and Mojo's twice and many different rooms and floors of the hospital. I truly believed she was going to get better. Around the middle of the week, she was moved to the third floor which was closer to the nurse monitoring stations. I guess if you were moved to the third floor you probably weren't going to make it out alive. I didn't know that until later. It was probably for the best.
Two days ago I got the worst message of my life. I got a message from Erika asking if I heard from dad. I told her I didn't get text messages at work. She said to call him. As I was walking out of the building for cell service I got a group text message. Dad said, "Grammie has about three days left and she will be gone." Reading that made me feel like someone had just hit me with a truck. I internally broke down. I was hit with so much sadness I didn't know what to do. Do I stay at work? Do I hold my emotions in check? I hurried down the stairs to the side of the building. I called dad as fast as I could. It was hard to talk without crying. I asked him why? Why does she have to leave? Very calmly he told me that this was her choice. She chose to be taken off all the machines except for the comfort care machines. I can't even image how much courage it took for her to make that choice. It was probably a really hard choice leaving everyone you loved behind.
Rationally, it was the right choice because it would end her suffering and irrationally, I was being selfish and didn't want her to go. This was the thing I never wanted to happen. After dad had explained what was going to happen I stood out there on L&I's campus feeling empty inside. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. I had been grief stricken and I'm not sure how I was going to handle it. I have never lost a loved one before. He added that we should probably spend as much time as we could with her the rest of this week. I had been going every day after work since she was moved to the third floor. I went back to work and said nothing. I kept it to myself. I was so worried about what life would be like without her. I did not sleep very well and had nightmares.
Today I went to work like I always do but it felt different from all the other days. I didn't feel right the entire day at work like something bad was going to happen. The Pacific Northwest had been suffering from fires and all the smoke was hanging in our atmosphere and wouldn't go away. It's been hot, smoky and agonizing over the past few weeks. Today was the worst out of all the smoky days. You couldn't really be outside very long in the brown haze. We all still had our internal hourglass dropping sand in the back of our minds as we thought about our final days with Grammie. I was distracted all day long and it was hard to focus on work since I was still learning. My building's air filtering system failed and some of the smoke smell got into the building just before lunch. Liz ended up going home early because of it. She has asthma and it was making it uncomfortable. The finally got it working and it took a while for the smoke smell to go away. When I left it still smelled like smoke.
I rode the elevator to the third floor and on the ride up I tried so so hard to compose myself. I had a really hard time. I found room 316 and walked in. Grammie's eyes were closed but she was aware of what was going on. Tracy was there and I visited with her for about a half hour until she went downstairs to get some snacks. I turned on the Seahawk's third preseason game against the Vikings and watched it with Grammie. There were times I wasn't sure she was still breathing and it scared me. Luckily, she wiggled her feet often. Tracy soon came back and she watched it with us. At one point over the course of the game, the Seahawks scored a touchdown. I yelled out, "Grammie, they scored a touchdown for you!" She wiggled her right foot letting me know that she heard me. Many times a day (since May 16th) I wished everything was back to normal and she wasn't in the hospital slowly leaving us. It was painful.
I spent a little over two hours with Grammie and Tracy before I decided to go home and get some stuff done. I was getting hungry and I didn't want to spend money on cafeteria food. The game was in the third quarter and we were not winning. Before I left, I told Grammie that I would come by tomorrow and see her. I gently touched her head and told her that I loved her very much. I was absolutely losing it in my mind. I gave Tracy a hug and told her I would see her tomorrow as well.
I went home, made and ate dinner and continued on with our normal stuff we do on Fridays. Doug had been staying with me at my house on the couch most of this week. Ben had been at work at Lowes until 8 that evening. We were all hanging out in the living room doing whatever. The TV was on, Doug was on his phone, Erika was in and out of her room.
Around 10:30 p.m. that night I got some severe anxiety. I had a lot of nervous energy and I didn't know why. I paced, I was trying to find something busy to do. I honestly could have ran a marathon without any struggle with the amount of nervous energy I had. I had no idea what was happening to me. It was very overwhelming so I just kept moving. I mindlessly rummaged through containers out in the garage and I didn't know why I was doing it. I didn't even know what I was looking for.
I went back into the house, sat down and stared at the TV. Around 11:20-11:30 that night we all heard my phone ring. I didn't want to answer it because I knew what we were going to be told. I've learned that no one calls you that late at night unless something was wrong. I looked at the phone and it was dad calling us. I knew it was bad news but I remained calm.
Dad, very calmly, told me that Grammie had passed away around 11:00 p.m. that evening. Every ounce in my being folded with grief. I fell to the floor and cried. Erika and Doug also had a hard time but they experienced their own form of grief. I knew this day would happen someday but dreaded it so bad that we never talked about it because it was so painful. We were now here on this day struggling to reason with it. Time went by too fast.
Doug and I decided to go to the hospital. We left the house just before midnight after I had gone through a bin of ducks to find the one that Grammie had given me when I was little. There is this picture of me when I was between one and two sitting in a small tub in the greenhouse playing with this rubber duck. It was important that I find that duck to take with me. I also took a picture of her with me. I was pretty calm on the way to the hospital. Doug drove. We found a parking spot and walked in, mom and dad got there about the same time I did. Dad's complexion was pale and you could tell he was holding in all of his emotions. We rode up the elevator together and I dreaded walking off. I did not want to go in. I wanted my last memory of her to be alive.
Around 1-1:30 is when we helped grandpa take bags of Grammie's stuff to his car. He drove the car around to the front and we helped him load them. I gave grandpa a hug and told him that I was sorry. On the outside he was very calm and stoic but on the inside I'm sure he was struggling just like all of us were. I felt so bad for him because they did everything together and that was now gone.
What was life going to be like without her? What were holidays going to be like? She was such a big part of my life and everyone else's it was hard to even imagine it. I knew for a fact there would be less Joy in it.
Doug drove us home and I couldn't sleep. I have never lost a family member before let alone a grandparent so I didn't know what to say or how to feel. Doug and I stayed up the entire night talking about random things because we couldn't sleep.
All those years listening to people saying life is hard I know what they meant by it now. Losing people is one of the hardest experiences we as people go through in our lives. It was worse than anything I have ever had to deal with even the physical pain from illness and injuries I have suffered throughout my life. Those heal and get better. This doesn't.
A part of me also died that day. I miss her very much and life will never be the same.
Next Adventure: Going to Nashville, Tennessee via Houston, Texas Red Eye
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