Gone, but not forgotten

Icie Lavera Hightower (Beady), My grandmother, passed away, and went to be with her Lord Jesus, July 29th, 2010 @ 8:02pm.

When my grandma first got sick, my dad was telling me about a poem he had read, or heard, a few years ago. Something about the dash. I had no idea what he was talking about. I found the poem today. Here it is ... it really makes you think ...

I read of a man who stood to speak

At the funeral of a friend

He referred to the dates on her tombstone

From the beginning to the end

He noted that first came the date of her birth

And spoke the following date with tears,

But he said what mattered most of all

Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time

That she spent alive on earth.

And now only those who loved her

Know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not how much we own;

The cars, the house, the cash,

What matters is how we live and love

And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.

Are there things you’d like to change?

For you never know how much time is left,

That can still be rearranged.

If we could just slow down enough

To consider what’s true and real

And always try to understand

The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,

And show appreciation more

And love the people in our lives

Like we’ve never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,

And more often wear a smile

Remembering that this special dash

Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy is being read

With your life’s actions to rehash

Would you be proud of the things they say

About how you spent your dash?

- Linda Ellis

That fits my grandma so well. She was an amazing woman. She lived her life as every woman should. She supported her husband in everything he did. She raised her children with morals and values. She loved her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren. She did so many things for other people.

I remember when she first got sick, one of the main things she was worried about, was who would cook the food for the young people's night at her church. She truly was a servant of God, and all of us should strive to live our lives like she lived hers.

I love you Grandma, and I miss you already. I know you've only been gone a short time from this life, and your life in Heaven has just begun. Grandma, sing with Grandpa, and walk with Jesus, and know that we love you for always!

The Great Picture Drama of 2010

So, as I'm sure you're gathered, my grandmother is sick. Very sick. Dying in fact. Over the years she's asked me for a few things, but now when she asks me for something, I feel like there's more of an urgency. Like it's something that I "need" to make sure that I get done for her.

A few months ago, actually right after we moved to Oregon, she started talking to me about wanting some pictures of my girls, and my brother's daughter. She asked me to look into how much it would cost, and that she would send me the money to cover the photos. I did as she asked and let her know. She was in the hospital (the first time she was admitted) when I got the information and called her to let her know. She was under the influence of heavy medication, and told me that she'd send the money when she got a chance.

A few weeks went by, and we got the money, so we made the appointment. My niece is a ham bone by nature, and that intensifies when she's in front of a camera. She gets really goofy. My oldest daughter loves to have her pictures taken, but my little one is a bit more shy. She's not comfortable around people that she doesn't know, and that includes people that are trying to take her picture.

We finally got through the appointment, and everyone (for the most part) came out of it completely unscathed. We were told that the pictures would be ready for pick up in about 2 weeks.

2 weeks came and went. We completely forgot about those stupid pictures. Literally completely forgot about that. To the tune of, they sat at the studio for almost a month before we picked them up. Oopsie. That's my bad.

So we finally picked up the pictures, and I finally got them mailed out. I was under strict instructions to mail an 8x10 to my father, an 8x10 to my mother, and and 8x10, and 2 sheets of wallets to my grandmother. My mother was recently here visiting, so instead of mailing, I just did the hand off when she was here.

I put my father's picture into an envelope, and I put my grandma's pictures into another envelope, took them to the post office, and mailed them off. This was Monday the 12th of July. As of today, the 25th of July, the pictures that were mailed, have not reached their final destination. That's effing great!

So I talked to my aunt today, and she seems to think that grandma is "waiting" for the pictures of her girls. Wonderful. She's hanging on, just until she gets those pictures. So tomorrow, I'm making a trip to the post office, and sending another 8x10 and 1 sheet of wallets (because that's all I have) and I'm shipping them priority overnight to my grandma.

I swear this is bigger than the presidential fiasco, when Al Gore actually won the election, but we got stuck with Bush for 8 years.

Such is my life I suppose ...

Until next time ...

~A

So I spoke with my aunt today, and it looks as though my grandma didn't get into the AC Hospice House. Which, right now, I'm OK with. Apparently that is for people that are expected to live less than 35 days. They don't think she's there yet. And as much as I don't want to see (or hear in my case) of her being in pain, I don't want her to die either.

So they're moving her from the current place she's in, to a different place. One, I think, that will be a lot more conducive to her ... recovery. Even though she's not going there to recover. I know that she won't recover. She knows that she won't recover. We ALL know that she won't recover. But I can't think of a different word to use at this point, so that's the one I'm going with.

There have been a lot of things going on in my life, I sometimes feel like I'm swirling around the bottom of the toilet drain, just waiting for the water to go down the hole. Amazingly, that never happens. I always get a refill, and come back up to the surface, I just sometimes feel like I'm drowning.

I've mentioned before that I've not really cried over the fact that my grandma is, well, for lack of a better word, dying. Let's face it (and I think this is aimed more at me than anyone reading this) that's what's happening.

My aunt said that yesterday (7/21/2010) was a bad day for my grandma. She (grandma) kept telling my aunt that the place where she's at, is horrible. That she has to beg for a glass of water. My aunt knows that's not that case, but what can she say to her at this point. It's kind of just a "smile and nod" type of situation. I know my grandma well enough to know that she's got the Hightower stubbornness (even though she wasn't born a Hightower, trust me, it's there). She'd argue till she was blue in the face, especially now. So when my aunt told her there was nothing she could do about the situation right at the moment, my grandma's response was "go get your daddy, he'll take care of it."

My grandfather has been dead for almost 10 years. I don't know if my grandma was just flat out not there, or if she "forgot" about grandpa being gone. I don't know what's going on with her, because I'm not there. And while sometimes I'm glad that I'm not there, so that I don't have to "see" her suffer, I also feel like I'm failing her in someway. I know that might sound crazy, but that's how I feel. I don't know any other way to explain it.

I don't know. I feel like I'm talking in circles at this point. I'm just a flood of emotions right now.

I guess that's my Que to call this blog entry finished, and sign off.

Until next time ..

~A

I talked to my Aunt today, and she told me that she's meeting with someone to try to get my grandma into the Hospice House.

Alexander Cohen Hospice House

This place is AMAZING. It's not the typical hospital setting. I don't know if this is something that is in other places other than in California .. which is why I included the link. You've got to see this place.

And .. if her insurance doesn't cover it .. it's free for her. Which is a blessing. Right now they're looking at spending $4000 a month for her to be able to stay in the nursing home she's in right now. Which IMO, is horrible. It actually makes me mad.

My aunt told me today that she thinks my grandma has given up. Which, I can't say that I blame her. I can't imagine how hard it is for her, day to day, to try to continue to fight a fight that she has no hope of winning. My aunt said that she's not eating, not necessarily because she doesn't want to (though that's part of it) but because she can't. She has sores all in her mouth and down her throat from the radiation treatments she had. She (my aunt) said that she has refused ALL of her medications. Her heart meds, her BP meds, everything. Occasionally she'll take a pain pill, but my aunt said even that's rare. She said that occasionally they'll get her to take a sip or two of water, but she won't take anything more than that.

She's refused to do TPN feedings. Again, I'm not too surprised. I know that she's ready for all of this to be over. She said that she's not afraid of what's coming, she knows what's happening to her, and she's ok with that. What she doesn't understand is why it's taking so long. So I think she's doing everything in her power to make it happen sooner.

As bad as this is going to make me sound, I'm actually relieved that's she's finally given up. I hate to think about her being in so much pain, and being so sick. I hate it. And to know that she was fighting something that she has NO chance at all of beating, just boggled my mind. I didn't then, and I still don't understand why she chose to fight for as long as she has. I guess that's not for me to know at this point.

I don't know (yes I'm saying this again) if anyone reads this or not, but if Hospice is available in your area, look into it. Look into volunteering, or donating. It's places like this that make it possible for someone in their dying moments to be comfortable. To be in a little less pain than they otherwise would be. Even if it's only one single dollar. It'll help more than you know. And you never know when the day might come that you or someone you love will benefit from a place like this.

I will forever be grateful for Community Hospice and the services that they provide. I've always been aware of it, and what they do, but I never really took the time to appreciate it. That's changed now.

Thank you for what you do. Thank you for taking the time out of your lives to make the life of someone else a little easier to live. Without you, these people would have to die in pain, and not peace.

Until next time ...

~A

He was standing in the rubble of an old farmhouse outside Birmingham
When some on the scene reporter stuck a camera in the face of that old man
He said "tell the folks please mister, what are you gonna do
Now that this twister has taken all that's dear to you"
The old man just smiled and said "boy let me tell you something, this ain't nothing"

He said I lost my daddy, when I was eight years old,
That cave-in at the Kincaid mine left a big old hole,
And I lost my baby brother, my best friend and my left hand
In a no win situation in a place called Vietnam
And last year I watched my loving wife, of fifty years waste away and die
And I held her hand til her heart of gold stopped pumping,
So this ain't nothin'

He said I learned at an early age,
There's things that matter and there's things that don't
So if you're waiting here for me to cry,
I hate to disappoint you boy, but I won't
Then he reached down in the rubble and picked up a photograph
Wiped the dirt off of it with the hand that he still had
He put it to his lips and said man she was something
But this ain't nothin'

He said I lost my daddy, when I was eight years old,
That cave-in at the Kincaid mine left a big old hole,
And I lost my baby brother, my best friend and my left hand
In a no win situation in a place called Vietnam
And last year I watched my loving wife, of fifty years waste away and die
We were holding hands when her heart of gold stopped pumping
So this ain't nothin'

This ain't nothin' time won't erase
And this ain't nothin' money can't replace
He said you sit and watch your loving wife fifty years fighting for her life
Then you hold her hand til her heart of gold stops pumping
Yeah boy that's something,
So this ain't nothin'
Yeah this ain't nothin'

Don't ask me why the above lyrics struck such a cord in my heart, but it did. With everything that's going on with my grandmother and her cancer, it really just hit me, and hit me hard.

I was in the car, kids in tow, driving to Wal-Mart. I needed to get a few essentials, and this song came on the radio. Here I am, driving down the street, and I just have a complete and total meltdown. I started thinking of my grandmother, and all the crap that she's going through, and then I started to think about my grandpa.

I started thinking about how he would react to my grandma's cancer, if he were still alive. I have a strange feeling, that his reaction would be much like the old man in this song. If you knew my grandpa, you know that he was not the type of man to get emotional about things. And when things happened to him, that other people might have thought was "the end" he had a complete different reaction that what would be the "norm".

Now I"m not saying that he would say that cancer is "nothing", but I don't think he'd react the same way that I'm reacting. I haven't really had a chance for this whole thing to sink in, and maybe that's why, but I haven't really cried a lot about the fact that my grandmother is dying. And let's face it, dying is exactly what she's doing.

Before we moved to Oregon, we met with her for dinner. This was in March. Now she'd been having some issues with her eye (which we now know is a direct effect of the cancer) but for the most part she was fine. She was able to drive herself where she needed to go, and do the normal everyday things people do for themselves.

We had been in Oregon MAYBE a month, and we got the call that Grandma had fallen, and been taken to the hospital. Upon being admitted to the hospital, they started running tests, and doing scans. The scan found the mass in her brain. Fast forward a bit, and she has a diagnosis of glioblastoma. For those that don't know, glioblastoma is the most common, and most aggressive form of brain cancer one could possibly get. Wonderful, right?!

Now, here we are, mid July, and Grandma is much much worse. She's been doing radiation therapy (mind you they staged her glioblastoma at stage 4 .. which is not good) and now her mouth and throat are so sore, and full of sores, that she can barely eat anything.

My mother went and saw her today, and said that in the 2 weeks it's been since she saw her last, there was significant change in her condition, for the worse. Her speech is slurred, and she can do absolutely NOTHING for herself anymore. We're talking .. what .. 3 and a half months. I can't imagine how hard this must be for her. I sit here, hundreds and hundreds of miles away, and worry. Still, not crying much, but I do worry.

I think part of the reason that song hit me so hard, is because I look at my own life in comparison to hers. The things that I'm going through, the things that I think are going to break me, are nothing compared to what she's facing. She's facing the fight of her life, literally. My problems, they're nothing.

Maybe that's why I thought of my grandpa. He would tell me the same thing. And this line ...

And last year I watched my loving wife, of fifty years waste away and die
And I held her hand til her heart of gold stopped pumping

I can't actually see my grandpa doing this exact thing. I wish that he could be here, to hold her hand while she's going through this. That's the one thing that she wants, I know. And that's the one thing that she keeps saying. That he's watching over her, and that he's waiting for her.

Lord Jesus,

I come to You know with a heavy heart. Lord God I pray that You will take the pain that my grandma is in, and ease it. Take her fears and calm them. Take her hurt, not just the physical, but the emotional, and squash it. Lord, let her know that You're there, and that You're holding her in Your arms of peace and comfort, and that fear is something she doesn't need to worry about. Let her mind be clear and free from worry, so that she can focus on herself. This I pray in Your Son's Heavenly name.

Amen

Until next time ...

~A

Finally!

I've finally did it. I've entered into the age of technology. I bought myself a laptop.

It's so nice. I'm able to do things on the computer, anywhere that I might be. I know, I know. Laptops have been around forever (ok, not forever, but it seems like forever) but this is my first venture into the world of "laptop land" and I'm really liking this.

I know, how dumb is it that I'm actually blogging about the fact that I've now gotten a laptop computer, but that's how excited I am.

Ok, blog over. Just ignore me ... lol

Until next time ...

~A