So the last few months have just literally flown by. As many of you already know, both of my grandmothers fell drastically ill around the middle of October. One of them made it out alive. My grandmother on my dad's side was siphoning wine (they make homemade wine every year) and apparently she inhaled a little too much alcohol. We didn't know it at the time, and we thought she had a stroke. She went to the emergency room and they said she had a BAC of .40. Honestly, she should have died. It's a miracle she didn't. However, when she was detoxing, she became combative, so in her charts, she is defined as a combative alcoholic, which she is neither. So after a few weeks in a nursing home recovering, she had made it back home.
The other was not so lucky. The day after my Grandma House went into the hospital, my Grandma Taisey/Kraus (my mom's mom) fell and broke her pelvis when she was getting a glass of water before bed. It wasn't anybody's fault really, she had been failing for a long time and something was bound to happen. She was taken to the emergency room where she was put on drugs and taken care of. I visited her that weekend in the hospital when I came home from school. She was kind of out of it, but still glad to see me, as she always was with her grandchildren. I felt that her room needed more decoration, so I went to the gift shop and bought her some flowers and a stuffed cow. I was going to get her m&ms (she used to get me them when I went to work with her when I was little) but she couldn't swallow and they weren't letting her eat anything. One of the last things that she said to me before I left was 'Katie, I want you to have lots of kids so that they can take care of you when you get older'... How can I not take that to heart?
So the next week, she got a little better and they moved her to a nursing home. She was only there for 2 days, and she ended up getting a collapsed lung. They sent her to St Joe's again, to the emergency room. This happened Friday morning of that week. I rushed home from school as soon as I could to be there. By the time I got there it was about 4-5 PM. I remember walking in... The only other grandkids there besides myself were Casey and Mandi. I walked in and she was on so much Morphine that she was half out of it but her eyes were open, and she was trying to make the effort to talk. She knew we were there. I remember my dad talking to my sister on the phone, and telling her to come home right away, and by 11 PM that night, Shannon was on her flight home. I remember my Grandfather and how upset he was. He loved my Grandmother so much. He kept hugging me and breaking down in our arms telling us he would miss her so much, which of course would make us cry... That night my mom and my Aunt MaryKay stayed in the room with my Grandma. Dad and I made the trek home.
The next morning I woke up at 5:30 to make cookies for the guys because they were pouring the concrete floor in the polebarn. I did some laundry and went to meet Mandi so we could pick up Shannon at the airport around 11. You could see the walkway into the hospital from my Grandma's room, and they saw us coming. Grandpa said he couldn't be in the room when Shannon, Mandi, and I got there so he was at the end of the hall when we came in. I went straight to him and gave him a hug and we cried into each others arms. I made so many trips from the hospital to our house that day, it was insane. In the end, we ended up all being back to the hospital by 8 or so that night. The Grandkids all got to say their goodbyes. Shannon, Mandi, Jayme, Kassidy, and I sang Happy Birthday to her because she always called every one of us on our birthdays (never missing one) and sang to us. (Mind you she was in an unconscious state) But she seemed to know we were there and that we were singing to her. Her eyelids started fluttering and we all started crying. We all kissed her on the cheek and said our goodbyes, went to the lounge and tried to play pitch. The kids were next to say their goodbyes (kids being my mom, aunts, and uncles)... Her drink of choice was Peppermint Schnapps, and my Aunt MaryKay bought some and snuck it in. They did a sort of mini-toast to Grandma and took one of her sponges and put Schnapps on it. She seemed to make the effort to lick it, from what they told us.
That image will haunt me forever. The room. Her hooked up to those machines. I can remember it like it was yesterday, and it has almost been a month. The breaths that she took that kept getting more shallow and further apart. Her eyes half open, and her mouth dropped down because she was on so much morphine... And even worse yet, I can see her in the hospital bed the week before she died. When I visited her after she broke her pelvis. She was in so much pain, and you could tell. But she isn't feeling any pain now.
The service went better than we expected. A lot of crying was done, but seeing all of us grandchildren together, each with our very own crocheted 'grandma blanket' that she made each of us, seemed to give me a comforting feeling. It made me realize just how important family is. We were all there for each other, and I feel like we've gotten closer. I feel it's what she would have wanted, and it makes me feel a little bit happier knowing that.
There were a lot of excellent memories involving grandma. Be it the weekend that us girls spent up at camp, or when we were sick, or when she used to sing to us, or when she used to yell at the cattle judges, or even when they used to go to Florida for the winter and I would write her a ton of letters. A lot of things I won't be able to do for a while without practically crying, like going to McDonald's after church on Sundays like mom, Shannon, grandpa, grandma, and I used to do when I was in high school. In the end it will be okay though, essentially nobody makes it out alive, and she had it the best, so to speak. Surrounded by her enormous family that loved her very much, and that's what I hope to have some day... Her advice to all of us was always 'you'll be a better person for this', no matter what the situation was. I will be a better person because of this last month. Thanks Grandma, I love you.
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