Death Ruins Blogs

Yesterday was my two year anniversary of when I woke up in the middle of the night with extreme chest pains and had to go to the hospital the next day. I was going to talk about all the cool shit that happened to me there and write a tribute to my faulty chest, and talk about how doctors were so amazed by my condition, they rushed out of bed at 2 in the morning to come see me. But instead of writing my story/tribute, I found myself caught up in another predicament. My grandmother died.

It was expected. As of Wednesday afternoon, the nurses said it would come in a day or two. Basically, my family began preparing, in different ways. I prepared for a phone call from my mom in the forthcoming hours. My mom was on the phone with undertakers and the lot. My dad was preparing console my mom when her mother went. And I'm not sure what my brother did. He's at track practice a lot and I don't get to see him as much as I'd like.

She was 92,only a week away from her 93rd birthday, and was one miserable, condescending former Registered Nurse of a woman. In my more recent years, where I began to see how things really were with the family, I witnessed the tension, loathing, and my grandma's ongoing desire to feel miserable. But still, to me grandma was always a woman with cataract problems and thinning hair. She was someone who we had to pick up from Pennsylvania and bring to our house three times a year; Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. She was the woman who gave me five dollars every time she saw me, enough to buy a WWF action figure when I was 8, and not enough to put 3 gallons of gas in my car, when I was 21.

Since the early '90s she began fantasizing about her own death. It became her new hobby. The more friends and family she watched grow old and die, the more she longed for it. Every time I'd visit, she'd remind my little brother and me that we'd "carry grandma's body in the casket" and we could "read all [her] favorite readings at the funeral." In fact, she planned her funeral arrangements with my mom two years ago, to either get a head start on the big day or provoke God into finally taking it all away. "It was the happiest I've seen grandma in a long time," my mom told me when she got home that day.

At Thanksgiving, my grandma collapsed two hours before dinner and was bed ridden the rest of the day. By mid December she was in an assisted living home. Two days before Christmas, she was hospitalized. By the end of December she was in a nursing home. The first week of January she deteriorated hard. And yesterday, she finally went. Her greatest wish was finally fulfilled.

No longer will I be receiving crisp five dollar bills every time we meet. No longer will I hear about her selection of final church songs and the misadventures of her future casket carrying sessions. The future is now. But at the moment, I hope my grandma's happy she got her wish. She conquered her hobby. She's like some fat 15 year old who just won the national Magic the Gathering tournament or caught all the Pokemon in Guinness record book time. Except their families don't have to sit through a church service.

I'll write about my near heart attack tomorrow.