A Time to Say Goodbye

I don't know the last time I went this long without posting. Much has been going on this week and it has given me little time to sit and think and write. 

A week ago Thursday my grandmother died. She was 89 and sharp as a tack until the end. She had some medical issues as most elderly people do, but she lived independently in an assisted living building. Made herself dinner every night. Volunteered in the office. Was a member of the bell choir. 

Our theory is that she was having some pulmonary issues and they took her to the hospital. Once they got her stabilized they decided to send her to a nursing home. Well, she would have none of that. My grandfather spent his last days in a nursing home and no one liked it - it may have shortened his life because it was the one thing he did not want to have to experience. I don't know if my grandma voiced her opposition to the nursing home of if she just decided that she had lived enough and decided now was the time. She died peacefully in her sleep.

So last weekend was spent rearranging schedules for this week and then this week was taken up with the visitation on Tuesday night, funeral Wednesday and interment Thursday. We did have the advantage that my grandma lived only about a half hour away, but there was still a lot of driving to and from. 

Here is a picture of my grandma with my kids a few of years ago. 

She had a rough patch there - she was in a car accident when the building's van was t-boned by another car (that is why she looks like she went a couple of rounds with Evander Holyfield.) Soon after she recovered from that beating, she was walking down the hall and one of her friends' cane was sticking out from her chair a little far and she tripped over it, fell flat on her face and broke her nose. Poor thing. But none of it slowed her down.

I am sad that my grandma is gone, she was my last living grandparent, but I am not devastated. She lived a great, long life, was with it to the end and went out the way she had always wanted to. I will miss her.

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I can never take anything too seriously. The bell choir that my grandma played in played a couple of songs at her funeral. As I was listening to them play a hymn and then a pop tune from the 1930's or 40's I started to wonder what kind of music a bell choir would play at funerals for my generation. I swear I could hear a bell choir version of Prince's "Little Red Corvette" or Linkin Park's "Bleed it Out." I am such a dork.