Great-Grandma's Passing

My grandmother passed away Monday night.

I will be writing a longer tribute to her later, but for now this is about my family's reaction.

I heard the news when my mom woke me up in the middle of the night to let me know she had died in her sleep. At that moment I grunted a "I'll call my brothers in the morning" and hugged my husband and tried desperately to fall back to sleep to no avail. My Fitbit later berated me for only sleeping for two hours that night.

My brother's calls were okay. I had been talking to them about what had been going on via a group Facebook message for a while. You see, last week was the week of hospital hell. My grandmother fell the week before that and was recovering (we thought) after a trip to the emergency room. Monday I took my mom to her doctor appointment I think because I needed to get Micah out of the house or something, because I remember he was melting down over something when she came back to the car. She told me that her doctor told her to go to the emergency room right away for a possible heart attack. Micah was in a full rage by the time we got there, so I took him home to try to get him calm. Blah, blah, blah, a bunch more stuff, my grandmother got sicker suddenly and I had to call 911 for her. My mom was admitted to the hospital at that point, so I called then followed the ambulance there. My mom was upstairs, I didn't know everything having to do with her health, but told them everything I remembered and then said they should look at the ER visit from the previous week for more info because my mom was unavailable upstairs. Grandma faded while she was in the hospital little by little. My mom got out, then had to go back in, then I had a visit with my neurologist for other fairly life changing news, and all this made me feel like I was drowning. Oh, and my husband wasn't around because softball. My in-laws took my kids for a good part of the time, though. Saturday we went to visit with my grandmother and found that she had been transferred to the rehab facility, but when we got there, she was barely speaking. Sunday she mom got little response from her, Monday she barely opened her eyes for anyone, then that evening she passed.

My mom is okay, by the way. She had pancreatitis and gallstones, not a heart attack, but it took them all week to figure that out. She had to change her diet pretty severely.

Okay, so that is my short explanation of the week plus of hospital hell.

Now we are dealing with the aftermath. Changing Mom's diet is really the least of my worries. Funeral arrangements, calming my mom down when her sister drives her crazy (her sister grieves and plans differently, so there are bound to be issues), telling my kids, working out the budget without my grandmother's monthly portion of the rent, and figuring out all the little details is really draining.

My twins were pretty easy. It was a short cry when we told them and a bit of apprehension on Zoe's part because she had been the one helping my grandmother from the bathroom when she fell one time, but not the last time.  They knew she was fading. They could see it as they helped her up until she had to go to the hospital. It wasn't unexpected for them.

Micah is different. He processes everything differently. I tell him in a matter of fact way that his Great-grandmother has died. He thinks for a minute. He says, "She lives with Jesus now." He goes back to his game. It's weird, but not everyone is a cryer, right? I'm not. My mom isn't. I don't know why I would expect him to do anything different. Tony is totally a crying kind of person, and that's cool. I make fun of him, but I think my kids would have a harder time if someone around here didn't look like they feel stuff.

Since that conversation we have talked about the funeral. I am giving my kids the choice, for really the first time ever, to go to a funeral. More than anything it's because they lived with this woman. They helped with her care. If a funeral helps them process everything, then they can go. I really don't like funerals and I never go to them. I always feel bad that I don't cry much and when I look around me and see people grieving I feel like I'm doing it wrong. I know intellectually that everyone grieves differently and it's not wrong to do it my way, but social situations like that are hard for me. I never know what others expect and I feel like I should do something different but I don't like to be fake. Anyway, the whole thing is awkward for me.

Micah asked me what a funeral is, and I explained it a bit. I asked him if he wanted to go and he said he did. That could get awkward. You see, Micah is very blunt with every observation. The feelings of of others are never really considered when he opens his mouth. I'm afraid he will have a rough time. I asked our very good friend to help him out during the funeral and take him out if he needs to go, not to hide him, but if he gets uncomfortable to let him have space.

Today was filled with observations from him in the form of statements like "Great-grandma is dead. She doesn't need her chair anymore." They are matter-of-fact and simple ways he is processing the changes that are happening. He told my mom "Don't call it Great-grandma's room. She doesn't need it, she isn't alive. She lives with Jesus." My mom, thankfully not the weepy type just said, "You're right."

The kids are excited to see extended family. It's not for the reasons that anyone would want, but they will like having them around anyway. My brother, Paul will be with them this weekend while Tony and I are in Florida to pick up Becca. She will be told when we get her. I just didn't want to let her hear the news without us around. You see, Becca was the one who over the past year before her summer in Panama got up every morning to feed her great-grandmother breakfast, give her pills, and just calm her. If my grandmother was irritated that I was the one caring for her after school, Becca would jump up and calm her down. She was the favored child. When my grandmother listed her children, she often counted Becca among them. Becca, my grandmother told me, was her favorite.

My other kids were good to her, and she definitely enjoyed them, but Becca stood out for her. Now, I'm sure that any of my cousin's or brother's kids being around would have been favored as well, but Becca was there. Becca gave her hugs without hesitation. Becca loved her even when that meant doing gross stuff for her. Becca is so very special.

Anyway, I don't know how that is going to go over with her. I wanted so desperately for her to not have to come home to this, but it is what it is.

My little bro, Steven will be doing the service for my grandma. He was grandma's favorite during my childhood. I was often told this. My little bro didn't know, but she told me often that I should be more like him. He was the good child. Honestly, he was. The other three of us were horrible. Still, it didn't help that we were constantly told how great he was and how terrible we were.

Steven was definitely the kid that took care of my grandmother before she needed constant care, though. She poured into him so much. He loved her right back. He should do a pretty good service for her.

I still don't know how to feel. I do have a weird hole in my gut since her passing. It's not something that can be fixed by crying. My grandma was a constant presence in my life. She affected me the way no one else can. I know she is with Jesus and Grandpa right now, so feeling sad actually feels wrong. I can't say I wish she was still here because she was in so much pain and honestly, she hasn't been mentally there in quite a long time. She wasn't the same person I grew up with and I really had to separate that long ago when she started yelling at me and telling me that she was going to "get the hospital to fire [me]." She really had no idea who I was, but I rubbed her wrong constantly in the last few years. I knew it wasn't really her, though. While it was rough to hear, I still separated it in my head pretty well most of the time because I knew she wasn't the Grandma that I knew anymore.

It's a strange place to be. It's where I am, though. I'm often strange.

Ten Years

Date: April 4, 2004

With my boy on my hip, I took a big breath and opened the door. Inside were the dark tan waiting room chairs, brown wood paneled walls, a basket of toys in the corner, and a counter with a paper on it to sign in. I walked to the counter, wrote my boy's name on the sheet, and sat down by the toys.

I put my boy on the floor facing the toys. At two and a half, that should have been what would entertain him while we waited to hear his name called in my opinion at the time. Instead he laid his head down and began looking at the labels on the bottom of the chairs.

I sat watching him, knowing we were a little early for our appointment. I thought of the discussions that I had had recently with several trusted friends. I had known that something was different about my boy for a while, and at least someone agreed with me because we had speech therapists at our house twice a week. One of my friends pointed out some characteristics that made her think of the "a" word. I had been told that it probably wasn't that a couple of times by his pediatrician and one of the speech therapists working with him. Other friends told me that boys are just slower to speak than girls, a fact proven true in my house, since my 8 month old girl was picking up quite a bit from her brother's therapy and was speaking far more than he was...and far more than any other 8 month old I had ever encountered. These friends told me that there wasn't anything wrong and I should just wait for him to grow out of this phase.

Another boy came in the room, right around my boy's age and he walked up to the toys and began to play. The other mom was talking with the receptionist, apparently disagreeing about the outcome of her son's lack of diagnosis.  I wanted to scream at her. Her son was fine! He was playing and talking to the toys. He turned to me and looked at me straight in the eye and said "catch?" I would kill for that kind of interaction with my son!

Thankfully, before I said or did something in my anger, I heard my boy's na

me being called. My son didn't look away from the labels he was so facinated with, so I picked him up and took him to the lady who called his name.

We were taken to another room with more toys and waited to be seen. Apparently someone had to calm down the angry mom in the waiting room. My boy walked up to the toy cars, took them out one by one, and lined them up in a straight line like a parking lot. I talked to him the entire time as the speech therapists had told me to. Having recently given up on eye contact, I just described what he was doing and that it looked like a parking lot to me.

 

When he had taken out all the cars, he laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling, flapping his hand in front of his face.

This was the scene where the psycologist walked in. She smiled at me and introduced herself. She explained what she was going to do and how and what each of the tests were as if I had any idea about what any of it meant. Over the course of the next several years, these words would become another language that I would learn, but at this point it could have been Chinese and I wouldn't have known the difference. 

The rest of that visit is a blur to me. She observed, asked a ton of questions,  tried to speak with my boy, and in the end walked away to input some things into a computer. It took several minutes,  but she cam back with a paper that said "diagnosis: autism." It said a bunch of other things that I would later learn and know meant that he was fairly severe, but I didn't understand nor care about all that yet.

 

I had a weird feeling of relief then, which later I would feel guilty about. Still, for me this was validation.  I was not crazy, something was different about my kid. Everyone who told me that I was just paranoid was wrong and I had proof. I smiled at the psychologist and walked out of the room with my head held high. I wasn't crazy.

I went home, picked up my baby girl with far more confidence than I had had her entire life. I fed her knowing that I wasn't a failure as a parent.

When Tony read the paper,  his reaction was so very different. He cried. I was in a whole different place, but I still understood. He was thinking that his son would not grow up playing baseball and video games with him. He didn't know if he would ever have a real conversation with his son. There was so much grief and uncertainty in him. It was the death of a dream for his boy.

We know now that my boy plays baseball on an awesome challenger team and has for many years, but back then it wasn't something that we could have known. We know now that my boy is crazy about graphic novels and video games, draws out what he is thinking so you can get a glimpse if you try, and likes to write poetry best because it is richer to him than normal prose.

We know that he loves winning, and running is just one of those amazing things that he is able to do for long periods of time tirelessly, so he loves a good 5k (and would love to do a marathon, but I'm not ready for that yet).

 We know now that we can converse with him, but he really only feels it necessary to speak to people if he is arguing or wants something. He is stubborn and opinionated, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the "a" word. It's a family trait and comes by it honestly.

 We know now that he enjoys vlogging, but he doesn't want to do it every day as originally planned.  He just doesn't want to talk that much, and vlogging takes a lot of unnecessary speech.

We also know now that somewhere in the middle of everything that we taught him he fell in love with Jesus and has a real relationship with Him. This goes beyond our understanding, but we are limited like that. 

Autism has played a role in our lives, but my son does not feel that the word defines him anymore.  If you ask him, he will tell you, "I don’t have autism, I have awesomeism." He told me once that autism is what people can't do. Awesomeism is all the things that he can do better than people who, in his opinion talk too much. He once quoted to me from James (a book of the Bible he dearly loves) "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." God is still working on him for the third part, but he has the first two down.