Goodbye

At the end of December, a few days before New Years, I had gotten up to get a drink and let out our dog. My grandmother was awake and watching TV. We exchanged a couple words, I'd asked her too go to bed, and she wished me a good night and that we'd see each other in the morning.

This was the last full, spoken conversation I had with her; a few short hours later she had suffered a major stroke.

I had to shovel snow out of the way for the paramedics to get into the house. For the next month she slowly recovered in the hospital. She was later deemed well enough to be moved to a specialist care hospital to receive rehab before moving to a more long term facility. We celebrated her 80th birthday with her in the hospital.

I last saw my Grandmother on March 2nd. She was active, lively, and while the stroke had effected her left side she was still in there, even though she couldn't speak. She could mouth the words, though (I'm unfortunately bad at lip reading) and called for a pen and paper. She wasn't able to write well, but the sheer fact that she was able to do so at all felt like a major victory. I had no doubt at the time that she WOULD recover and be able to come home eventually.

Last Wednesday morning, shortly after being moved to the long term care facility, she had a cardiac arrest. My mother flew up...I couldn't stay at the hospital, and on a few short hours of sleep went to work. I've never been good at waiting, and the prognosis...was not good.

Yesterday morning, after a long, full life, surrounded by her children, my Grandmother passed away.

She could be ornery, she could be stubborn, but she loved her family. She would always be there to babysit, or to lend a helping hand if needed. She saved me from being homeless after a paperwork screw up with my VA Benefits left me without money to pay my rent while in college. Having her there to see me graduate was one of the prouder moments of my life. She got to see my sister's wedding and her first great grandchild, she will miss my brother's, but met his fiance and her son. She saw me return safely from war, and her other grandchildren join the Air Force.

There was also drama, but I will not speak of that. She was a tower in our lives.

One of the gifts I received from her was a small, paperback edition of Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads. I had been in the Army a short time and discovered that Kipling's works covered far more than The Jungle Book, and despite not being much for poetry herself, when she learned of things we liked she'd go out of her way to get them. It was with me in every foreign desert that I was deployed too, I still have it on the shelf above me. Worn, beaten, but survived everything I did. It's one of the most treasured things I have ever been given from her. The last poem in it is not a poem about soldiers like the rest of the book, but a hymn entitled L'Envoi:

When Earth's last picture is panted and the tubes
        are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the
        youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it - lie
        down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put
        us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they
        shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with
        brushes of comets' hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from-
        Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never
        be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the
        Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one
        shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in
        his seperate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of
        Things as They Are!

God Bless you, Grandma Betty. We miss you and love you so much words fail.