I started writing this post over a week ago, intending to tell y’all why it’s been so long since I’ve last uploaded anything, but something happened last week that was more important.
Something devastating happened last week.
My grandmother — the woman for whom I’ve been caring for over two years, the woman who taught me how to make biscuits, the woman who, coupled with my mom, taught me to cook, the woman who was always proud of me in everything I did and always asked about my progress and what I was writing or drawing or whatever — passed away.
It was both sudden and something we’ve known would happen for a long time. We’d seen the decline in her health for years — hence my mother and I caring for her and her household — but the week before last she went to the hospital. The weird part was, upon her arrival home, she got better — her vitals were great, her weight and water retention had improved more than in five years. But then, she got worse. She lost her appetite. She was restless. She was tired . . . she was so tired.
Eventually, she acted like she was caught between waking and sleep — unable to fully comprehend what was said — so my mother and I stayed together with her on her final night. In the morning, she hadn’t gotten better. One of her therapists had come to evaluate her because we’d planned on calling a nursing agency. And then she became weak.
She knew.
She knew that was her last day. She told my mother she loved her and said her goodbyes. She told me she loved me. She made sure mom knew where her burial clothes were. And then she slipped onto the threshold of death.
We called an ambulance and they took her, but it was her time. I won’t give many details — it just doesn’t right — but her heart was too weak to function on its own, so she was given a medication keeping her heart pumping . . . but we knew she wouldn’t wake. It wasn’t how we imagined it. It wasn’t how I would’ve had it. But it gave all the family time to come or call and say goodbye, pay her their love, hold her hand, and sing sweet to her as she left the world behind her.
We’ve since laid her to rest and gathered to mourn — though we’ll all still be mourning come Thanksgiving, tomorrow.
I cry as I write this — with both pain and relief. Pain to have seen her off on the voyage to eternity, left with a hole in the world the shape of my grandma’s soul — knowing I’ll never hear her chiming cackle or taste her banana pudding again, knowing I can never touch her hand or comb her hair, knowing I’ll never help her walk or make her meals. “Pain” is the closest thing I can think to call it — this cold gripping thing in my chest, grabbing my guts and gnawing my soul, this icy loneliness, this selfish, silent cry in the dark for my gramma. But relief knowing her race is over and her final battle won.
My family — gramma included — and myself are Christians, and we know this world and our lives in it are just a small step in eternity. Our first breaths and deaths were in this world. But for the dead, we know the shedding of flesh is no more for the soul than when we shed a coat from our shoulders. We walk on from the coat and leave it behind, so too does the soul walk on from the flesh and leave it behind. So, there is relief, because despite the icy hands of grief and the cutting tears and the screeching cry of my mourning spirit, she has stepped from her body and now treads in Glory. She can dance and run and sing like she’s never sung before. She’s with her brothers and sister — her departed son, Uncle Carry — and every saved saint of God.
You may think that’s just the coping mechanism of a weak, religious mind that can’t handle the idea of oblivion and absolute absence from existence after death — and if you do, keep thinking it. I’ve stopped caring what people think about my faith. But I know this — truth exists independent of human reason, and it isn’t so weak-willed as to stop its work because people can’t fathom it. The sun won’t stop shinning because humanity stops believing in it. Whether believe in the life after or not makes no difference to its existence, only our part in it.
How arrogant we are to assume such importance and power to augment or dictate the ordinances of reality — like a bacterium speaking and assuming a human could even hear it.
But my gramma? No, she knew the truth — she knows Christ. And so she’s no longer bound to her pain and suffering, her battles are over, her race is won, and her Lord has welcomed her with open arms, saying, “well done my good and faithful servant.”
In life she was strong and one of the most generous people I’ve known. And in the life after, she is complete, whole, and free — a soldier having fought in a ceaseless war, finally returning home and allowed to rest and rejoice, reunited with friends and family and YHWH God.
This isn’t my normal post, but it’s not a normal time in my life. I don’t know what the future’ll hold for me or you or anyone. I may take a hiatus — I may not.
Just remember to tell everyone you love that you love them. Make amends with your enemies and cut strife down as your real foe because life is fleeting and intangible as smoke. No one has time to afford petty grievances when our last days may the next hour. We often forget we’re mortal and this life has an end, so, while we’re here, we should live as if each moment might be our last. Not in fear, though, in peace. If we love and are loved, if we work all we can for the good of all we love and strive to not make enemies of others around us, what could we have but gain? What could we have but peace?
Tell someone you love them and mean it.
Bye for now, y’all.