11:38 a.m. - 2004-12-26
The Day After

The Day After

Thank you all for your Merry Christmas wishes and condolences. Actually my Grandmother's passing was not a "Tragedy"....at 100 years old, you certainly can't say she went too young. They really were getting to the point of looking into a nursing home. It is almost a relief that in the end she didn't have to go into one. She lived in her own little house until she died and up until a year ago pretty much lived alone with some help from her Daughters, Meals On Wheels and the county care givers who sent a nurse around to give her a bath and check on her general welfare.

In the end, she died at a party. Sitting there at the dinner table, just having scraped the last bit of spinach out of her Italian Wedding Soup. The table was full of people talking and conversing and my Aunt looked over at Grandma and said something to her. She was just sitting there like she was listening to the conversation....but she was most likely gone at that point. There was a slight twitching of a hand.....reflexes, not a sign of life. She did not fall over...did not close her eyes....didn't quiver or quake...there was not so much as a last gasp for air.....just eating a last bite of soup one minute and gone the next. Like she just left her body sitting there to enjoy the party while she quietly left to go home to God.

Isn't it a shame that we can't all go that way, pain free, healthy, sitting at a party surrounded by family?

The only regret here is that due to the timing, my sisters and I will not be able to attend the funeral. We feel terrible about this as we never imagined in our wildest dreams that we would have to miss our own Grandmothers funeral.

Diane lives in Australia and the logistics and expense of getting back here by Tuesday is just an impossibility.

Linda and her family are enroute to a long planned trip to Florida where they are to meet with her husbands family. It is a family reunion that they had planned for quite a while and they don't get to see them very often.

I was just there, sitting in her little kitchen, capturing her essence on camera and tape 2 short weeks ago. I am starting a new job in one week and have some planning to do in the way of buying a wardrobe and filling out volumes of paperwork. With Mike unemployed, I could barely afford another trip let alone the 3 days I would need off, unpaid, to make that trip. Because I was just there, I am consoling myself with the fact that I should feel lucky to have seen her in the last two weeks of her life rather than make the trip to see her lying in a box. Still....because we are a close knit family, it just doesn't seem right not to be there with my Aunts, Uncle and cousins.

Oh well....life goes on and so it shall.

Except for the entry about my Grandmother, I haven't posted all week long. The mystery woman who delivered my New Years invitation was my neighbor. I went to a wedding of an AA buddy in October. Seated at my table were my neighbors whom I am only mildly acquinted with. I only go to one AA meeting per week, most AA's go to 3 or 4...some go every night of the week. My AA buddies know my neighbors from other meetings. I didn't know they were on the program and they didn't know I was until we ran into each other at that wedding. Seated at our table were two other women whom all of my AA freinds, as well as my neighbors know. They are having an AA New Years party because our regular official party has been cancelled due to no one wanting to host it this year. I guess they remembered me and suggested that my neighbor drop an invite in my mailbox...mystery solved. Will I go???? Probably not. I am not a party goer and most of my close AA freinds will not be attending either. If I went, It would be me and mostly strangers and making small talk with people I don't know is work to me....I am not a social butterfly. I do much better in cyberspace where I can weigh and measure my words....in conversation when I am nervous...I always talk too much and say the wrong thing.

Anyway...this is getting lengthy...so I will stop here and continue the events of the past week in tomorrows posting. In spite of trying to have a Non Christmas.....ie: Lay low and just try to relax.....The holiday sucked me right in and made me participate anyway.....Lots to tell....but will save it for tomorrow.

Happy Boxing Day!!!!

P. I. Yarnsmith

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