Love and Death

My maternal grandmother is literally on her deathbed. She has a rare bone marrow disease that basically sucks all her good blood cells out of her blood. It is to the point where blood transfusions and medicine are of no help. She is just terribly weak all the time and now can't even sit up. So she is going to die. She has decided to die. My Mom said she has let go of the idea of living and fighting to stay alive any longer. She made that decision almost a week ago. Yet, she is still alive. I think it's instinct to live, ya know. She is ready to go, her body is barely functioning, but she's not gone yet. It's a strange thing...waiting to die...can you imagine? Going to sleep and thinking, I really might not wake up this time...

It's not just her waiting, it's all of us. I keep waiting for the phone call from home, waiting to make plans to travel back for a funeral, waiting to start making a memorial video, waiting to grieve.

The family waits. My Mom has stayed there for a whole week straight taking care of my grandma every second of every day. She even sleeps with her so she can monitor her breathing while she slumbers. It's a care that comes from such a deep kind of love that there needs to be a new word for love to describe it. It is the same selfless caring for that I witnessed my Mom give my Uncle when he was dying. It's beautiful. But it's awful. Because she knows her Mom is going to die at any given minute, regardless of the care she's giving. So she waits without rest. Waits to say goodbye, waits to let go, waits to fall apart.

And my grandpa, Opa. Poor, waiting man. No one in a million years thought he would out live her. For so many reasons, Oma dying first makes no sense. He waits to let go of her too; but in the mean time is letting go of his mind. It's too much for him to handle, to deal with. As my Mom said the other day, he doesn't know up from down right now.

It's devastating and it's unfair. But death does brings meaning to life...to her well-lived life and to my life and to your life and to the lives of those before her. Not only does it bring meaning, it brings about that new word for love. That deep, rich, forgiving love that is easiest to give in the hardest of situations.