Bittersweet

It's been a rough week in Tracy-world. My grandmother was put in hospice care on Wednesday and is not expected to live for more than a handful or two of days.

There's a backstory here, of course. My grandmother is in the end-stage of Alzheimer's, which is a brutal disease. My beautiful grandmother, who lived across the street and whose house I went to every day after school, who would feed me cookies and milk and try to make me eat All-Bran in the morning, and who would only let me watch Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on TV, because the rest of the TV shows were "junk"...she doesn't know who I am anymore. And maybe doesn't know who anyone is anymore, even her loving husband of 61 years. And she can't open her eyes for very long, and she can't swallow, which caused the pneumonia that she was diagnosed with in the hospital this past weekend. The irony of Alzheimer's is that your body could be doing fine, just trucking along doing great, and your mind, your memories, your consciousness...just leave the building. And then, to add insult to injury, the systems that your brain controls start failing, too, as the disease takes over. But slowly. Because it sucks more that way.

It's the most bittersweet thing to be in this moment. I sat with my grandpa in the nursing home for hours yesterday, just the two of us, talking about everything from Krispy Kremes to World War II. Anything to get our minds off the fact that this woman in front of us, this woman that we love so very much, is dying. It is complicated grief, this feeling. This feeling that we are all so excited for my grandmother to go home to heaven, to see her Savior, to see those who have gone before, to be able to laugh, to sing, to talk and think clearly again. This feeling that I cannot imagine a world without her, this grief, rich, textured and unexpected. She is the best role model I have ever known for a faithful life lived in service to God. She prayed about everything, constantly, and the sounds of her kitchen were of mixers whirring and Moody radio playing sermons and hymns nonstop until bedtime. She is my grandma, the woman who dedicated her life to raising a family that was also faithful and loving, and a family that remains unusually close and loving to this day. I cannot imagine my life without my cousins and my aunts and uncles, my parents and sister. They are my right arm, my strength, the people that I can turn to at any point for support, encouragement, prayer and laughter. Without my grandmother, and her faithfulness, they do not exist.

It is so very bittersweet, this moment. When I wrote a monologue about my grandmother a couple of years ago for an arts festival, I cried at the Alzheimer's that was taking her away from me, from all of us. I didn't cry again until this week. There is no good way to say goodbye to someone who has meant so much. But in the words of Anne Lamott, traveling mercies to you, Grandma. May you safely and painlessly reach your awesome final reward, and may God bless you richly for your work here on earth. We will miss you.

(For Lauren's view, read her blog here: http://searchandknow.blogspot.com. The girl can write...)