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Biofamily
It turned into the kind of weekend where I dread every email.
My grandmother had either a stroke or a seizure on Friday. My uncles are with her, but the last word was that, besides breathing, she wasn't doing much. Hospice nurses give her "several days to two weeks".
For context, in the last distinct memory I have of her I couldn't have been more than seven. We were visiting her in the assisted-living home she'd recently moved to. It was breakfast, and I poured an unlabeled pitcher of vinegar over my pancakes thinking it was syrup. Sometime when I was in high school, she stopped coming to family Thanksgiving; she barely recognized her own children, let alone the other 70 of us. A few years back she stopped going to church; when the response to a cousin's gift of chocolates was "No thanks, I don't like that stuff," my mother made her peace.
This isn't a particular surprise, or even a terrible tragedy. My grandmother was nearly 90, and stayed happy even as the woman we knew faded. I don't feel that something inevitable can be much of a tragedy, and singularity futurists notwithstanding, no life is infinite. She's comfortable and in good hands; there's nothing more that's fair of me to ask.
So for now, I wait, and will probably have to fly out east sometime in the next few weeks. That waiting, being "on-call", is the worst part, and couldn't have come at a worse time. Work is more or less in the tick of tradeshow season, and I have tickets for a trip to San Diego for the final crunch week before MWC. My bosses are understanding and accommodating, and I can leave my stuff in a state that others can keep going with it, but this is still one of the only times of year when my team has non-negotiable deadlines.
When I knew her, I was not old enough to grok why I should say it, and I can't say it sincerely enough now.
Grandma Martha: Thank you.
click
My grandmother had either a stroke or a seizure on Friday. My uncles are with her, but the last word was that, besides breathing, she wasn't doing much. Hospice nurses give her "several days to two weeks".
For context, in the last distinct memory I have of her I couldn't have been more than seven. We were visiting her in the assisted-living home she'd recently moved to. It was breakfast, and I poured an unlabeled pitcher of vinegar over my pancakes thinking it was syrup. Sometime when I was in high school, she stopped coming to family Thanksgiving; she barely recognized her own children, let alone the other 70 of us. A few years back she stopped going to church; when the response to a cousin's gift of chocolates was "No thanks, I don't like that stuff," my mother made her peace.
This isn't a particular surprise, or even a terrible tragedy. My grandmother was nearly 90, and stayed happy even as the woman we knew faded. I don't feel that something inevitable can be much of a tragedy, and singularity futurists notwithstanding, no life is infinite. She's comfortable and in good hands; there's nothing more that's fair of me to ask.
So for now, I wait, and will probably have to fly out east sometime in the next few weeks. That waiting, being "on-call", is the worst part, and couldn't have come at a worse time. Work is more or less in the tick of tradeshow season, and I have tickets for a trip to San Diego for the final crunch week before MWC. My bosses are understanding and accommodating, and I can leave my stuff in a state that others can keep going with it, but this is still one of the only times of year when my team has non-negotiable deadlines.
When I knew her, I was not old enough to grok why I should say it, and I can't say it sincerely enough now.
Grandma Martha: Thank you.
click