My Grandmother

I remember loving to be at Grandma's house. Us kids would play and play and play, while all my aunts and uncles would stay up late and play mahjong and smoke cigarettes in the basement. I'm an only child, so being with my cousins at my grandma's house was the BEST. I never wanted to leave when it was time to go. We'd lip sync to Duran Duran, do gymnastics on the couch, trip the younger kids as they ran circles around house, play mad scientist in the bathroom with all of my grandmother's toiletries (Ever do that before? Take everything in the bathroom cabinets and dump them in the sink and mix it up? Like shaving cream, shampoo, lotions, toothpaste, mouthwash?). Yeah, good times. We were there almost every weekend, sometimes even on the weekdays late at night when the restaurant closed. We were a close knit family back then...

Here is a picture of all of us. The whole entire family on my Dad's side. My Dad is third from the oldest, and he's the one holding the glass. There are 6 brothers all together, and one sister, who isn't pictured here, or her family- who includes three more cousins and an uncle...They lived in Florida so we rarely saw them. This picture- is when I remember everything the most. My grandmother is at the bottom, second from the right, holding little Allison (not so little anymore- well none of us are). It looks like it was grandpa's birthday here...he's the one in the middle (bottom), just completely engulfed by grandchildren...

My grandmother died this morning. She's been in the hospital for nearly a month now, in and out of the ICU, with a mystery diagnosis that was always lost in translation. She was nearly 90 years old (although no one knows for sure). My cousin Andy called me around 11:00 last night, and said grandma might not make it through the evening. Off I went to the hospital with him, to see her- to try to figure out how it all went so wrong so fast. Last week she had her gall bladder removed and we thought that was all the riff raff that had been giving her grief. Everything was supposed to be OK. She was going to go home in a few days. But days turned into more days, and she'd been in and out of the ICU, never really able to fully recover. But she was all there, all there in the head. Just last week when I saw her before her gall bladder was removed she wasn't doing too bad. It was like she finally didn't want to fight anymore. In the past couple of times in the previous weeks that I saw her, the second I got there, she was immediately trying to send me home, like- she didn't want to trouble me, or waste my time. But this time, she called for all of us. Like she knew. And we were all there...everyone in this picture- with the sweet Sherpa making her way back.

I'm not going to lie and say that I know that she went peacefully. In fact, I just wish I could have done more- she was on CPAP, uncomfortable, and I didn't want to see her hurting. I wanted to push morphine til the cows come home, and I was frustrated because I knew there was a better way. Her lungs were filled with fluid, and the next logical step would have been to intubate her, and put her on pain and sedation meds. But my family is old school- us cousins are first generation here in the states. They believed that intubation was more invasive, and it would prolong her pain and suffering. So there she was, on her back, a huge CPAP mask covering nearly her entire swollen face- no one could hear what she was saying, and she just kept trying to take it off. You could see it in her eyes that she was suffering, gasping for air...and since she was only on CPAP, all she got for pain was morphine every two hours. Sigh.. I can say that she got to see everyone...all of her children and her grandchildren, and perhaps this is how she wanted to go- to fight tooth and nail until she was certain that she was able to see her legacy that she was about to leave behind.

We left the hospital around 2am- and she died this morning around 5am. I do know that they finally gave her more morphine, and I refuse to let myself think that she suffered anymore. My last living grandparent is in heaven now too.

I hated taking family pictures back then. It always used to annoy me when the parents would call to us from upstairs (as we were dumped in the basement) and make us all stand and take pictures like the one I posted. They'd break up our fun! We'd all have to shuffle upstairs and take picture after picture after picture. Well I don't have any brothers or sisters, but I do have a wonderful group of friends that are pretty much my family. And we do to our kids what our parents did to us. We let our kids run wild while we all got together and had some drinks, and our kids would play..we do all of that now, except take group pictures.

I'm thinking we need to start.