Our Time...

Today with Grandma was rough....I am usually very very strong but when I left tonight I cried most of the way home. I finally called my dad so that I would stop crying and replayed everything that happened from start to finish. She had an insanely rough day....words can't describe how bad her day was. She's slipping away from us but a little at a time which is not how we every dreamt it would be with her. We always thought it would be instantaneous with her but it's not that way. If you have ever been through the pain of watching someone die one day at a time and being there every step of the way you understand. I have done that with all my grandparents except one who died before I was born. This one though I have been there the most and will continue to be until her last day in this life no matter what sacrifices I have to make....it's definitely changed my life in the past few months. Every evening and every weekend I travel to wherever she is and sit with her and work with her to get better. Not exactly the typical 25 year old lifestyle but that's ok. The roommate that she has currently has a grandson who is my age who is doing the same thing and so we shared a laugh about that tonight as we continued to eat hospital food....it's all starting to taste the same that's for sure. :)

Her mind is slipping away and that's harder to watch than her body slipping away. We can fix her body slipping away a lot better than her mind but there isn't much we can do for this. She was not herself today and to the degree that she had to move rooms...that was hard. She's not the woman that I know but she doesn't know what she's doing. It's so hard because she wants to die and she is in the best position to pass away of anyone I know. She has loved the Lord and served him with all her heart for her entire life. We continue to discuss the Lord's faithfulness even in these trying times, we still pray together, read the scriptures together, laugh and cry together about how His timing is not our own. She has everything so prepared on this Earth for her to pass away when it happens. Every night she thinks it's her last night and every morning she wakes up. I'm at this point where I would love to see her live forever but our bodies are not meant to live forever and she is not living life well at this point and not enjoying it. It has always been my prayer that when the Lord takes her home that it's fast and that there is no pain/suffering and that's not happening. She's miserable and in turn in causes misery on a lot of family members.....the other day she cried and just kept saying that she wants to be with the Lord. What do you do with that? Everyday I ask her to work hard and do her exercises and eat (oh what a debate that is!) and not to give up but she is so done with this life and has nothing to look forward to from her current perspective.

I do really love how the Lord has been working in this final stage though. It is an extreme blessing by having her in this hospital because they focus on physical and occupational therapy. Her physical body is in the best state it has been in for months.....if she could just gain weight it would be set.....it's her mind that's not ok all of a sudden. The nurses bend over backwards for her. There is one in particular that Grandma adores and she would do whatever she asked. I baked her cookies the other day because we couldn't have done this without her. The new roommate that Grandma has as of this evening is not in a good position health wise but is from my hometown of Akron and has the same family physician as my grandmother.....how amazing! I sat with her and her family and talked with them a bit tonight and it was just so amazing to see how the Lord would put her with this woman that knows a lot of the same people that we do and has a very similar upbringing.

I know the truth and I know that the Lord takes us when it's our time. Sometimes in these situations though you wonder what His plan is. Clearly there's something that one of us as a family is to learn, the staff at this hospital, my grandmother, who knows. I have never understood suffering and I've gone through my share of it in my lifetime and I know that I have always learned so much from it but this type is different. She is not even well enough to leave the hospital tomorrow to come be with my family. We were going to go pick her up and take her to my parent's house for a small dinner and she can't even do that........so we're going to her. This Christmas is a little different to say the least......