I hadn't really thought about my year so far. But next week is October and before you know it, the holidays are going to be rolling by and it'll be 2008. Professionally, it's been a wonderful year for me. It's been an assurance that I made the right decision. Personally, it has been hell. My great grandmother passed away earlier this year. It wasn't completely unexpected, she was in her 90's. But because of other feuds in the background, it made it an even more stressful time. My grand grandpa has had a really, understandably, tough time since she died. He basically took care of her the last years of her life and then suddenly there was no one to take care of. He's currently being bounced between family members until he decides where he wants to live. I know most of us would prefer he go back to Texas with his siblings. Others, the side of the family we don't speak to anymore, would rather he just call it quits so they can take his money. Unfortunately, he lives about half the time with one of those members of the family. He's had injury issues off and on since his wife's death.
Just a month later, my great aunt, who I'd spent my early summers with as a child, passed away. She'd been in a home for several years and was, unfortunately, robbed blind by this other side of the family. They took the house she'd lived in forever and anything else they could get their hands on and left her to rot in a home while they bought million dollar homes for themselves and their children.
Last night I got more bad news on the personal front. My surrogate grandmother is in extreme critical condition at a hospital back home. She was found not breathing and, as of this morning, is believed to be brain dead. I'm waiting as I write this to find out if they've taken her off life support. I have the option of going to see her before she passes. The doctors are trying to figure out why she stopped breathing before they let her go. She hasn't had the easiest of years recently. She was my grandmother's best friend for a long, long time. They raised their kids together, in the same house at one point. They lost touch for awhile and after my grandma died, I spent my summers with the surrogate. It was a lot of making up for lost time and I loved every second of those summers. Looking back, some of them were almost enough material for a book. They say kids can sense more than adults think they're letting on and it's true. This woman had a tough life. She'd been to jail and had familial issues. But through it all she maintained this sense of...togetherness, in my eyes. If you knew her at all, you could always tell when things weren't quite right but it didn't matter. She is one of the few people on this earth that I've met who doesn't judge someone at first glance or even during a first conversation. She has one of, if not the, biggest hearts I have ever seen in another human being. She was a fun mother and an amazing grandmother. She was bedridden for many of those months us kids spent with her and I remember every now and then she would feel good enough to take us out somewhere. We'd all pile into her Cadillac (she LOVES those things) and head out to wherever we could. It was always an adventure. I remember the last Christmas I got to spend with her and the family. Someone found this stupid game where you place these hand-shaped things on your lower back and a post connects your side to the other persons. There was a dingy type thing in the middle and you had to move your hips to try and get it to rotate. It was ridiculous but everybody took their turn on that thing. It was a fun holiday for a lot of reasons. Probably one of the best I'll ever have. It was never about money with her, and God knows she never had much, it was about caring for people. I have wonderful memories about those days. But now I feel guilty. Once I was stable financially, I started sending back money to help her out. But I found out the money was going to her boyfriend and to alcohol for the both of them and I had to stop. It was a tough decision because you want to help out anyone you love. I called, I tried to once a week. But soon, the calls became bad. She was either drunk or completely hung over with slurred speech. Then, there were times when I would feel picked on because she would bring up something about my life that I didn't want to talk about and it would progress from there. I never knew if it was her or what she'd been drinking but it was enough to make me stop calling altogether. The last time we talked was almost a year ago. I was about an hour away from my hometown and I called to tell her and said we'd been down one day soon and we'd go to lunch. But then I got a job in New York and things got hectic and such. I wanted to call and I wanted to see her but I kept thinking of the hurtful things that had happened and not the good from years past. Then, when my great grandmother died, there was a huge funeral back home because, love her or hate her, everyone knew her and wanted to pay their respects. I didn't go to her funeral. Partially because I was sick and partially because I didn't wanna face the other side of the family. I don't hold grudges, it's a waste of energy. I just did not want to see any of them. It was because of them that my mother spent a week in the hospital when I was 13 years old and she still feels the effects of everything that went down. I hear I was missed at the event, most notably by my surrogate grandma. She wanted to see me and talk to me and I wasn't there. I'd been hearing the past few months from my cousin how bad she was doing. It always weighed heavily on my mind. This amazing woman has been in my prayers every night since those reports started coming in. I've never really been one to sense deaths and things coming on, that's my mother's talent, but the last week and a half I have had this overwhelming sense of...I don't even know the word. Doom? I've had a feeling something was going to happen to her and sure enough it has. I've been debating whether I should go see her tomorrow, if she's still being kept alive. When my grandma died, I was 9 and she suddenly worsened overnight and everyone rushed to the hospital. I remember hearing the words 'she didn't make it' from my aunt and just feeling numb. I had been extremely close to her and I always felt guilty for not feeling enough at that moment. I guess it was more disbelief than anything else. I had a hard time sorting my feelings after that and I thank God for my Godmother because she walked the halls of that hospital with me and talked everything through, even though she'd just lost her own mother. They gave us the option of seeing my grandma after she'd passed and been taken off the tubes. My mom asked the three of us (my sister, brother and me) if we wanted to see her. I said no and so did my sister. My mom said she wouldn't go either, if we weren't. My little brother wanted to give her a last kiss. He went with my Godmother. I didn't want to remember my grandma hooked up to machines and cold and lifeless. I wanted to remember the good and I do most days. That's why I don't think I want to see my surrogate grandmother tomorrow. Part guilt and part wanting to retain the good memories and not the bad. And funerals...I've been to way too many in my life and I don't know that I want to go to this one. I've got that same numb feeling I had when I heard my grandma passed. And this time it's worse because of the guilt and because I know the rush of things that are going to hit me all at once in the aftermath of all this. I'm glad I have the people in my life that I do to help me through it and especially thankful for one in particular. The live keep living, as they say and I know this is going to be a tough loss but not my toughest. Losing my best friend/girlfriend was the one that made me wanna die. I know now that I can keep living and that I want to keep living. But...why does my family keep taking so many hits lately?
