Grieving Part 2

*I wrote this blog back in August or September. I was not able to post it before this because the pain was too strong. I still get weepy when I read it, but through writing, I am able to find healing.*

Today I was going through some photos of my wedding and when Parker/Bubba were babies. I wasn’t prepared for how many pictures there were of my Grandma. The fresh round of grief that came over me when I saw them almost knocked me off my feet. My heart felt like it was breaking all over again and the tears just wouldn’t stop. She was such a huge part of my life growing up. I have so many memories of us together. Waking up in her bed after my mom would drop me off before going to work. Shopping together. Taking walks to the creek when I was like two years old, to throw rocks in the water. It’s like having home-movies, playing over and over again in my mind.

I had such high expectations when my Mom moved her up here to the Assisted Living Facility last May. She was finally going to get better, I just knew it. Nobody could tell me any different. All she needed was someone to give her that little push to help her get better. After all wasn’t this a place that was designed to help seniors regain their freedom? I guess I thought she was a product of her environment before she came. Living in a convalescent home wasn’t going to help her get better; it was just going to help enable her to stay sick.

We (my mom, her friend and I) worked so hard decorating her little “studio apartment” so that she would feel at home when she came. We brought some of her pictures, and her lamps. We brought the clock that my Aunt gave her for her birthday all her porcelain figurines. We painted, and bought new bathroom stuff and bedding so it would all match. We put plants top of the cabinets and new dishes in them. We stocked the little dorm sized fridge with the Diet 7-up that she liked.

It just never even occurred to me that she wouldn’t get better. I would call my Mom every day and ask if she was getting better. And after she fell and My Mom, Dad and I sat in the hospital with her all night, I thought maybe now they will be able to tell why she wasn’t getting better. Maybe she just needed a better hospital. Maybe she just needed better doctors. Maybe she just needed us to pray just a little bit harder. I kept waiting for God to perform the miracle that I was asking for.

And when I got that call saying that she wasn’t going to make it more than a couple days longer, I thought maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe, just maybe, God was waiting until the last minute. You know, testing how strong our faith in him was.
I wasn’t angry when she passed, because like I said in a previous post, I knew she was going to a better place. A place where she could see her parents, and her husband, and her little grandson who died when he was three. A place of music and dancing and rejoicing. A place with no sickness and no tears. And I know in the Bible that it says that she will have now remembrance of the life that she had on earth, but I can’t help but think that she is my guardian angel, smiling down on us, and counting down the days until we can all be together once again.

I look back now and think about how naïve I was about the whole situation. And the regrets. Oh God, So many regrets. Why didn’t I visit her more? Why did it bother me so much to see her sick? I guess it’s because I wanted to hold on to the memory of what she used to be, and I was afraid all I would remember was seeing her sick. But that wasn’t fair to either of us because we both missed out. She missed out on having my unconditional devotion, but I missed out on so much more, because I missed out on Her.