Mother's Day loss

My grandmother died on mother's day.  I got a call as I was ditching church, laying in bed reading and painting my nails.  My parent's said she wasn't breathing well, that's all they knew.  She had been in a nursing home for two years and was doing just fine.  (we found out later she choked on some food, aspirated and there was a DNR so they couldn't do anything for her) But I knew I had to go to her.  I thought I would make it.  I dressed, packed a bag and waited for my husband to get home from church.  Then I drove 2 hours to where she was in the nursing home.  When I arrived I was still sure I'd made it in time.  As I walked up to the building one of my cousins was coming out and she told me it was too late.  I cried.  I couldn't believe I missed her.  I went to her room where my aunts and uncle were around her bed and I had missed it by five minutes.  I sobbed!  I was present when my maternal grandmother passed away and somehow it was important to me to be here too.  but I was late.  I kept going over it in my head, if I had not waited for my husband to come home, or if I had not stopped to fill up a water bottle before I left, or if I had sped, or taken a different route, what if I hadn't stopped for lunch on my way?  I sobbed and sobbed.

My Grammy was 90 years old. She had been getting progressively more senile for 10 years, the last few were the worst.  There was such a conflict in me over her well being and my parents which I wrote about here. But to know she is gone, it is so final.  I have had such a torrent of emotion over the last week and a half.  Her funeral was on Friday.  We went to Pueblo and stayed a few nights in a hotel.  we should have stayed with my cousin, but we hadn't seen each other in 10 years and it seemed weird.  In retrospect we should have just done it.  But it was great to be with family.  To reconnect with them.  I am so sentimental and sappy. I love them and was glad to be with them, even if it took this sad time to bring us together.

I miss my Grammy.  I have missed her for a long time.  But it is final and she is gone, and I have been feeling like I don't have enough memories, enough pictures, and I just want to hang on so tightly to the ones I have. I am overwhelmed with my emotion and distress of the last week and then I go a day with out crying and I wonder if I have forgotten.  Or I feel cold and uncaring that I can't cry today.

I was so blessed to be loved by her. And I never want her forgotten!