My grandmother died today.

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So I come back from lunch and sit down in my office. I have
a few messages waiting for me and whoever the jerk was didn’t leave
anything and just hung up (more on that later). I start back to work and
about a half hour later the phone rings again. It’s my mother. She’s the
one that called but didn’t leave a message. She tells me my grandmother
died this morning. Silence. “Are you all right,” I ask, talking to myself
as much as my mother. “I’m fine,” she replies.

##You’re never quite ready

I’m still a little stunned as I write this. Although everyone in my family
has been expecting my grandmother to die for at least a couple of years, it
still came as a shock.

##”Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

It was really my Grammy’s time to go. She had be suffereing from
Alzheimers for years and it had been in the final stages for at least the
last year and a half.

At least twice in the last year the doctors were sure she would die. And
both times, she fought through it to stay alive another day. No one is
really sure what was driving her, but her family has always been
fighters. It probably has something to do with surviving the
“Potato Famine”. Most of the Irish around the world are *very* strong
people.

##Isn’t it just grand

A friend of mine from work told me something that I find
pretty comforting. Her mother works at an Alzheimers care center and she
visits there often. She tells me that she loves going there because all of
the patients are always so happy. She says that she things that the reason
they’re happy is that what Alzheimer’s actually is is when the memory
system kind of reverses itself and the person starts going back through all
of their best memories until they reach the beginning and are ready to go.
They’re always happy because they’re always reliving something pleasant.

So, although it’s tough on the family, everyone can take some solace in
the fact that at least the victim is not suffering.