This is my 85 year old Grandmother, Nora Kate. In this picture she’s making her famous homemade Christmas truffles. She’s made them every year as long as i can remember. I helped her make these last year and it’s a very special memory. She is truly my greatest role model. In her age weathered hands she holds my heart.
When my life began to unravel I moved home to take care of her. She had just been placed on hospice care and the thought of her being admitted to a nursing home crushed my spirit. I knew I was in a period of upheaval so I decided to burn everything down and emerge like a Pegasus. I quit my eclectic high-paying job, packed up, moved here, and here I am still. I came here to take care of her but mostly she takes care of me.
This week has been a hard week for me. I’ve known for a few months that Grandma is in the final stages of her terminal illness: congestive heart failure. Honestly it seems only fitting that such a loving woman with a heart far too big for her petite frame would eventually pass away from a disease that means your heart is simply worn out and can no longer work. I’ve known for the past year that her spirit was getting ready to move on. She’s been dreaming and talking about heaven for some time. She’s seen the spirits of departed loved ones in her room and talked with them extensively. These things took a little adjusting to. They were sad. They were hard. They helped prepare me for this week.
This week is the week we were told by her nurses that she’s exhibiting signs of being within the final days of her life. I can’t even type that without crying. I’ve wept this week as I’ve watched my sweet Grandma teetering with one foot in this world and one foot in the next. She sleeps almost 20 hours a day now. But it’s a busy kind of sleep. She talks almost constantly. Sometimes I can understand her, sometimes I can’t. It’s always clear though that she’s talking to people she is familiar with about things to come. She looks around the room to different focal points and directs her speech toward them. She also moves. Her little arms and legs are hard at work. Yesterday she lifted her hands as if she was smelling of flowers. The day before yesterday she was startled when she woke up at the disappearance of rings she’d been wearing in her vision.
This may sound frightening, but it’s not. I often just watch her though the crack of her door or listen to her over the baby monitor we keep in her room. She is so at peace. So completely at peace.
There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that there is a heaven at that my grandma is beginning her journey to that place. And although I know neo-atheism is popular among my peers I honestly do not know how I’d make it through this time without God. I’m not ready to lose her, I don’t think I ever will be. But I am at peace and I have a hope.
