Goodbye Grammie

I haven't posted for a while because things have been crazy since my grandma broke her hip. She went into surgery to fix it and she went through the surgery just fine, and was faced with starting rehab and physical therapy. In the hospital she was finally able to get under some pain control from morphine, due to the hip, but also eased her chronic pain she has been experiencing. For those of you who don't know she was suffering from severe arthritis, and debilitating headaches, and she hadn't slept much in months. She was never able to take anything for long enough to help because she was so sensitive to meds. Well, this helped her to get relief from a very small amount of morphine, and wednessday night she went to sleep and didn't wake up Thursday - they couldn't arouse her. She just lay in bed snoring away, they did physical therapy on her while she was out of it and everything. It was hard to watch. When she didn't arouse from such interaction they checked her vitals and her Oxygen sats were at 79 on 2 liters of oxygen, (not good, you want at the very least for it to be 90). They were able to get her sats up with a oxygen mask, but she is DNR and we did not want to do any life support measures. So the doc came in and we talked that this was probably her exit. he explained to us that when someone is in such pain for so long they are in a struggle with life, and it engages them to stick around even if they don't want to. Once you get under proper pain control it can release them to let go. Well, she let go alright. After that talk, at about 4pm on Thursday, she left this world at 550pm on Saturday. I was able to be with her for about 7 hours on Thursday, 3 on Friday, and a few minutes before she died on Saturday, then I sat with her, my mom and my sister and my uncle Mike for a few hours, until she was taken away. As strange as it may seem, it was a beautiful experience to be with my grandmother as she left this consciousness. I knew the minute I saw her Thursday that she was leaving. I actually had a dream (i can't for the life of me remember when it was) that my grandma fell while walking to the front door of my parent's house, and i ran out to her, and she died. Well, that is basically what happened. She fell at her front door, and soon after died. Weird how sometimes we psychically know things. I was able to talk to her, and read to her. I read her a passage out of Thic nhat han's book on dying. She loved his writings. I have collected a few of his books from her house for myself. She loved the buddhist teachings, and i felt that she would have loved for me to read to her, as she was a veracious reader. I was able to say goodbye, and she never got to see my new haircut, and i placed her hand on my head and had her pet me, then 5 minutes later she left. At the moment of her death my mom's cell phone rang, it was my uncle, and also in that same moment my aunt walked into the room. So a representative from all of her children were with her when she died. We all had our hands on her, and she just slipped away peacefully. it was quite an amazing experience. It was so refreshing to know she is not in pain. there were a few times when she communicated enough to let my mom and aunt know that she wasn't having pain. I am helping my mom clean out her apartment. It is going to take a while for it all to sink in because it happened so quickly. But we will have a memorial for her on mothers day this year. I am just so glad that she is out of pain and who knows what happens when you die, but my wish for her is that she is with my grandfather. She was never the same after he died. I just hope that she is apart of nature, in the wind, in the birds, and in the flowers....