november rain

i was thinking of posting an "i feel a-changes a-coming" post last night, on the occasion that my home theater receiver is on the fritz and i have returning-from-vacationitis. as it turns out, changes are coming, and they're not related to my stupid dvd system.

my grandma is probably going to die this weekend.

she had a bladder infection last week while i was visiting her. i talked with her, and held her hand, and she seemed groggy but not terminal. she met W and they smiled at one another. For many years, grandma hasn't had the ability to easily make new memories -- we could have the same conversation 5 times in an hour. But my mom says after I left, grandma talked a lot about how happy she was that I was now married and how pleased she was to have met my wife.

That's close enough.

She floored me by saying "let me cogitate on that" in response to something my mom said to her. I'd never heard anyone use that word in conversation, let alone someone who lived in an assisted living facility, as she does.

but a day or two after we left, grandma had what has now been identified as a stroke. she's had little ones before, but this one was bad. she hasn't been conscious for days, and the neurologist says "she's not there", and that someone who hasn't woken up after this amount of time will almost certainly end up on a feeding tube in a nursing home for the rest of their unpleasant life.

so that about wraps it up for grandma.

i said a while ago somewhere on this blog that i wouldn't be too sad when she went, because i thought she wanted it. but it's been a long time since i've heard her talk about being in "god's waiting room", and my brother's finally graduating college and i've finally got a girlfriend and everyone in grandma's life is approaching some modicum of happiness that she's waited so long to share in

and she wont

she's been through plenty, enough for anyone's lifetime, if we can really ever have enough. i honestly don't know, from my age. she's past 90, i can't comprehend that perspective.

but i know that everything in my own life happens at exactly the wrong time. it looks like that's happening to her, as well. in life, as far as i can tell, one weathers the tough parts in the hope that good times will lie ahead. she's seen more good times and bad times in just a blink of her time on earth than i've seen my whole life. but she was on an upswing.

she was happyish, as far as i could tell, as far as anyone -- especially in her condition -- can ever be. and though i never communicated well with her -- especially in her later years -- i finally had things i could talk with her about. the last half decade it's all been work. i can't talk to my grandma about computer programming. but i can talk to her about being in love, and share that happiness with her. i can talk to her about the things that i enjoy doing that existed back when she was my age : running, hiking, camping, being outdoors and around friends.

but i never really did, and now i cant.

my dad's parents and brother died within the last decade. they all lived far away and i had little contact with them. i've had little contact with grandma, since i moved away to college, but she helped raise me. she was always nearby, never remote or removed. and when my other grandparents died, i was a selfish, cold, unemotional, one-track-guy. it didn't hit me like this. grandma's not even gone, yet, and i'm already crying more than i did for the other set.

i don't know what that says about me. it just happened that way.

so changes are coming. big ones. a huge portion of my mom, dad, and brother's time has been allocated -- for the last decade and a half, at least -- to assisting grandma in the difficult business of carrying on living.

when she's gone, i can't predict how it will affect my family other than to know that it will have a very large, very noticable, and probably very immediate effect.

i've only seen my mother really, truly upset one time. and that was simply stress and frustration and disappointment. i can't imagine what this will be like. i've learned a thing or two about selflessness since my dad's family died, though. i will do what i can to help all of us through whatever lies ahead.