Squirrel's Ink

I don't think I mentioned that the yelling, alzheimer-y grandma is in the hospital, but they're sending her home for hospice care on Monday. Assuming she lives that long, anyway.

I went out to visit today for possibly the last time. I've got a full weekend ahead and my parents are encouraging me not to break my plans for this coming weekend, since we don't have any idea of knowing how long she'll hold out. She's bloody stubborn.

I feel guilty for saying I would rather go out, too. I did the deathbed sitting thing with my other grandmother, who died two years ago, and I find now that waiting for death doesn't get any easier. If anything, its even harder.

What a horrific two days.

It's wierd. All weekend people were coming by, bearing food, laughing and talking. It was almost like a party. Then we all went to the wake and then the funeral and everyone just lost it. And then, after the initial shock wears off, everyone's laughing and talking again. In the case of the wake, they/we did it with the body in the same room as us. It's like something is built in to our brains: ignore, ignore, ignore.

I'm going to miss him. I know he was cranky for the last year he was alive because he missed grandma so much, and, yeah, his paranoid fears that I was going to get myself killed somehow were annoying, but I am going to miss just sitting with him watching Law and Order or Keith Oberman (sp?) or whatever else. That's something I remember clearly: I went to visit New York two summers ago, when we knew grandma had only a month or two left to live, and I expected them to be doing something out of the ordinary together. Maybe have long discussions or something. Instead, they just went about their normal routine: leftovers for dinner and then go downstairs to watch TV together.

Maybe I should get a TV. I don't have one here.

It was nice to see all the relatives this weekend. It would be nicer to see them when someone hasn't died.

I feel bad about a lot of things right now. I feel bad that I thought about going to see him on Monday last week and didn't. I stayed home and cleaned the house instead. I feel bad that my youngest cousins, who are twenty years younger than me, didn't really get to know their grandparents. I feel bad that my extended family seems to be disintegrating. I feel bad about some really complicated stuff involving my uncles that I'm not going to get into here. When I look at all the problems I realize that I can do something about it, and I actually did try a bit this summer. I'm an adult and I have a car, so I can take my little cousins out so that they at least get the experience of extended family. Maybe I can be a good influence to try to balance out the dumbness of my uncles, which is what my grandparents would try to do when they were alive. It seemed to be working up until grandma died.

I'm done rambling for tonight. My brother was snoring and giggling/mumbling in his sleep all night last night so I didn't sleep much.

I'm so not prepared for the morning.