One year ago today, my family lost a very special person. My Grandmother was a woman who loved quietly,
but fiercely. She was so kind and always
took the time to listen to others. She
had a smile that could light up a room.
I loved sitting next to her in church on Sunday mornings. When I was younger, she helped me sew dresses
for my dolls. She tried to teach me to
knit, but that didn’t last very long! There
are so many memories I could share, and I know she touched many lives in
addition to mine. She was just a special
woman!
I don’t think I realized how special and important she
was to me until she passed away. She and
my Granddad lived in the same town as me when I was growing up. I loved seeing them and spending time with
them, but as I got older, eating with them after church sometimes felt like a
chore. I now wish I had treasured those
moments. I am blessed because I have
known all four of my grandparents. In my
teenage years, I knew that losing them was becoming a real possibility, and I
told myself that when they passed away,
I would be thankful for the time I had with them. I imagined I wouldn’t be too saddened by
their deaths because I had the opportunity to know them for so long.
My Grandmother was the first one of my grandparents to
die, and I was so wrong. My
Grandmother’s death threw my world into a tale spin. It crushed me. Maybe letting her go has been so hard because
of the circumstances surrounding her death.
In December 2010, my Grandmother had a stroke. Other than a few minor health problems, she
was a perfectly healthy woman. There was
nothing to indicate that she would have a stroke. It was an aneurysm, so there really would
have been no way to predict it. The
stroke was completely unexpected.
Although she had surgery soon after the stroke happened and she could
breathe on her own, it fully crippled her body.
She spent the last eleven months of her life in a bed and she didn’t’
speak, walk, or interact. She did open
her eyes and she did occasionally move her mouth as though she were trying to
say something. There were those moments
where she seemed like she connected with people. But we were never able to do anything to
really restore her to any semblance of her old self. My Grandfather sat faithfully be her side
everyday. My mom split her time between
taking care of her parents in our old hometown and taking care of her husband
and home in a new city.
In the beginning, we had hope. The surgeon thought the original surgery had
gone well. There was brain activity. As the months passed, most of my family began
to realize that she was not going to get better. Unfortunately, my Granddad could not seem to
see this reality. He always seemed to
believe that she would get better.
Looking back now, I think deep down I shared that hope. I didn’t even realize it until after she was
gone, but as long as my Grandmother was alive, God could work a miracle and
heal her. Once she passed away, she was
gone forever. Although, I am thankful
that she believed in the saving love of Christ because I now have the hope that
I will see her again in heaven!
Even as the hope that she would get better faded, I
imagined that I was prepared to face the separation caused by death. Seeing her crippled and unresponsive was
horrible. The woman lying in that bed was
not my Grandmother. I believed in my
heart that dying was the only way for her to truly be healed, and I thought
that belief would make handling her death easier. God’s plan was to heal her in the best way
possible, but once again I was wrong about how I would handle it.
When she died, I hadn’t hugged her or talked to her in
almost a year. The last time I heard her
voice was four days before her stroke.
There was no final good-bye. I
didn’t get to say one last I love you. I
don’t even really remember the last time I saw her. If I had known that was going to be the last
weekend I had with her, I would have made it count. I would have been sure to remember every
moment, and to give her a big hug and tell her I loved her. But I didn’t know and I didn’t do those
things. I think those regrets have
haunted me as I’ve dealt with her loss.
Also, I didn’t realize how important she was to me or
other people until she was gone. I was
amazed at her visitation by the people who came and the genuine love they had
for her. Their love for her didn’t
surprise me, but I could tell that part of the reason they loved her was
because of the love she showed them.
Now, that I realize her amazing ability to love, I wish she were here
for me to tell her how amazing she was.
I also wish she were here to continue to give me her wisdom. I never imagined my life without her, and now
I’ve had to begin to picture the future without her. I so wish that me or my siblings or my
cousins had been at the point in our lives to have children because she would
have loved meeting her great-grandchildren.
There have been a number of repercussions to her death that have changed
me that I won’t go into now, but her death has changed my life and the lives of
my family.
I have learned so many things in dealing with my grief over
my Grandmother. There are two lessons
that are evident to me in this post.
First, I will be much more cautious in telling myself I’m ready to
handle any situation, but especially the loss of a person dear to me. I had a vague idea of what I thought grief
would look like, and I was completely unprepared for what it would be
like. Now I’ve experienced it, and I see
how hard it is to let people I care about leave my life. There have been times in the past year where
I’ve thought about loving the people who are currently in my life, but not
adding new people to the list of those I love.
But that goes against the other lesson I’ve learned. As far as I can tell, my Grandmother had loved
almost every person she encountered. I
want to be like her. I want to show God’s
love to as many people as I can. And I
want to be sure that the people I already love know how much I love them. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to make
someone else feel special because my Grandmother certainly made the most of all
her opportunities. She will always be a
part of my life, and I hope I can pass on her legacy of love to everyone I
encounter!
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