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This picture is a brand new picture of our grandson Isaiah.  I’ve copied and pasted Tiffany and Laurie into the picture, too, because I think there is a lot of resemblance between him and his mother and grandmother.  

Yesterday was our 6th Anniversary.  It didn’t go well, for most of the day.  Since I haven’t written for a bit, you may not know that Laurie is in the hospital with a pretty severe case of bronchitis.  For some reason, it’s been really difficult to treat.  Later in the evening, our friend Christine and my cousin Jennafer visited, and we had a lot of fun, so the day was saved! 🙂 

Back to Isaiah….we’ve decided we are not fit to adopt him.  It’s certainly not that we don’t want to.  With all our health issues, particularly my wife’s, and medications, and the fact that it’s difficult for either of us to move as quickly as we would probably need to….well, it took a lot of thinking and discussing before we decided.  The positive side is that we can still be in touch with him.  The photo above came to us via mail, along with two others.  That’s the first step in reconnecting.  I’m really excited about being able to talk to and eventually see him.  Neither has happened yet, but they’re in the works.  

 

Here’s the baby of our family, Benny, Jr.  We call him "Bug".  He is 2 1/2 years old, and he sure does love his Grandpa!  Don’t worry, though, the feeling is very mutual!  It’s too bad he only knows me by my voice, but that’s certainly better than not having this precious baby boy in my life at all!!!!!  Elisabeth tells me that he’ll bring the phone to her and say, "Gampa!  Gampa!"  It’s so cute to hear him say it!  We have a few videos and a voicemail that he has left us, and I play them and giggle.  I play them so much that it drives my wife crazy!  I’m WAY more a doting parent and grandparent than she is.  I think with Bug, she’s getting better about it.  

Oh, and when I surprised her with a framed picture of Isaiah for her hospital room, I made a video of her seeing it for the first time.  There she was with a breathing treatment mask on (I didn’t know that beforehand or I would have waited), and I told her to close her eyes.  Then I got a shot of the picture in the video, put the picture on the table by her bed, and told her to open her eyes.  I guess it didn’t dawn on her who it was, because she just said, "Awwww!", at first.  I said, "Do you know who this is?"  and she said, "It’s hard to see through all this steam."  So I said, "This is Isaiah."  She started crying and saying, "Oh, my baby!" and holding the picture to her chest.  It was the greatest reaction I could have hoped for!

We didn’t think the caseworker would really send us the pictures.  We thought he was blowing smoke up our asses, but he really DID send them.  I was so excited when I saw the envelope!  When I opened them, my first thought was how handsome our little boy was and HOW MUCH HE LOOKS LIKE HIS YAYA!!!!!!  

Life is changing so much and so rapidly.  I’ve lost one very important role….that of grandson.  Within six months of each other…today marks exactly six months for Nanny….we lost both our grandmothers, one to cancer, one to old age, I guess.  I was totally devastated by Nanny’s death, back in December, but with Memaw’s, two weeks ago on Sunday, it’s been somehow different.  I’m sad.  I miss her.  Of course I do!  But I’m not devastated.  Maybe finding out what her last words at the nursing home were helped.  A nurse found her wandering the halls in her wheelchair, which was a usual thing for her, and asked her, "Mrs. Franks, where are you going?"  Memaw said, "To see Jesus."

What a perfect thing for her to have said.  I guess she knew it was her time.  

Both my grandmothers stayed totally true to their characters until the days they died.  That makes me feel good.  It gives me hope for my own future.  Nanny’s battle with cancer was quick and almost painless; or at least, she rarely complained of anything but leg pain, and she’d been doing THAT for years!  Memaw was not in pain, that we know of, either.

I want to share the details of my last visit with her.  

It was about 6:45am, I think, and my best friend Stacy called me and told me Memaw was being sent to the hospital in an ambulance.  It was a violation for her to have called me, since I wasn’t on the contact list, but she did it as a favor to me, knowing I’d want to know, and I’m SO GLAD she did!  

I went to the hospital, and she had just arrived.  They had me sign her in, which surprised me.  I thought the EMTs would take care of that, but now I’m glad they had me do it.  For an emergency contact, I put my mother’s name and number.  If I hadn’t done that, I don’t know what would have happened.  I never DREAMED that information would be needed.

They had me sit in the waiting room for a bit, then called me back.  When I walked into Memaw’s room in the ER, I said, "Do you know who I am?", which was our standard question when we would visit her.  I asked it with a mischievous smile, as always.  She smiled back and said, "Jr.!"  That pleases me greatly.  She knew who I was.  I went into the room and sat right beside her.  I tried to engage her in conversation, but she just looked at me, mostly smiling and mouthing words but not talking, which was a recent development.  I put my hand on top of hers, which also was my standard behavior when I visited her, and talked to her.  

She had been sent to the ER with suspicion of a stroke, but that was not the case.  They took her for a CT-scan and said everything looked "normal", her brain was fine.  The only other time I heard her talk that morning was when the phlebotomist came to draw her blood.  The lady asked Memaw to straighten out her arm, and Memaw said, "That’s a baby arm."  I laughed a little and said, "A baby arm, huh?  You know how old that baby arm is?  It’s 89!"  As usual, Memaw smiled at me.  

When the lady actually was ready to draw blood, I put one of my fingers into Memaw’s left hand.  Her left hand no longer opened, which is why it was only one finger.  I told her to squeeze if she needed to, if it hurt too much.  She didn’t squeeze.  I

nstead, she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes.  When the lady stuck the needle into Memaw’s arm, Memaw made the most awful face…but not any noise at all.  It was terrible.  It was like seeing them draw blood from a baby, and I started crying.  THAT is what haunts me from that last visit with my grandmother.  That face she made just will not leave my mind, for some reason.  

A little while later, my mother showed up.  I stayed about another hour, which made my visit approximately 3 hours long.  While they were inserting a catheter in Memaw, Mama and I stood in the hallway.  Since I didn’t think this was the last time I’d see Memaw, and I was very sleepy from not having much sleep, I told Mama I was going to go home and sleep some, then come back during the day sometime.  I don’t even remember saying goodbye to Memaw.  I think I left while they were working on her.

During the day, Laurie kept me pretty busy, but Mama kept me posted on how Memaw was doing.  She was developing pneumonia in her left lung, they said, so they admitted her to the hospital.  I was worried, but not too much, because Memaw always healed quickly and easily from everything, even well into her 80s.  I thought if it was caught so early, it would be okay.  And really, it WAS okay.  Pneumonia didn’t kill her.

Since I didn’t go there once I was awake for the day, on the same day as my morning visit, I decided I’d go visit her the next day.  How I wish I had figured a way to go during that day.  She had visitors.  My mother and her brother Clyde, at least.  They stayed a long time with their mother, so she was not alone much.  

During one phone call update, I had told Mama I was a little uneasy, because of the way Memaw was breathing.  I told her it was like watching Nanny breathe, toward the end of Nanny’s life.  It scared me, but I still believed Memaw would be okay.  

The next morning, at about 7am…so almost exactly one day after Stacy called me….Mama called.  I could tell she was driving, by the background noise on the phone.  She sounded a little weird, and I was wondering why she would call so early, since it was paper route night, and she wasn’t even done with her part of the route.  She asked me, "Do you remember telling me last night that the way Mama was breathing was the same as Nanny was breathing when she died?"  I said, "Yes."  I was getting scared.  She said, "Well, you were right." Her voice was trembling, and it took a second to sink in, what she meant.  I screamed, "FUUUUUUUUCK!"  Then Laurie woke up and knew what was going on.  She’s very good at that, knowing what’s going on instinctively.  I asked Mama where she was.  She said she was heading up to the hospital to take care of some details and visit with her mother.  I asked if I could come up there, and she said yes.  (I didn’t want to intrude on what might be her private time, saying goodbye to her mother.)  

When we hung up, after telling each other we loved each other, I went completely hysterical.  I called Stacy and told her.  She was as shocked as we were, because nobody thought Memaw would DIE  from this hospital visit.  Stacy works at the nursing home where Memaw lived, and she did our family the favor of paying special attention to Memaw, as much as she was allowed to do.  The nurses didn’t seem to mind her doing that, because everybody up there loved Memaw and they knew Stacy is my best friend, so it was kinda like she was taking care of her own grandmother, too.  Stacy told me to stay put, she’d come get me and take me to the hospital.  Laurie didn’t realize what we agreed on, so when Stacy called back in a few minutes to say she was on her way, Laurie picked up the phone and started yelling, "Not now, Stacy!  Not now! Not now!"  I tried to tell her that Stacy was coming to get me, but this routine happened a few times in a row before Laurie finally got the point.  That hurt Stacy’s feelings and pissed her off, but she forgot about it quickly enough.  

Stacy got here pretty quickly, and we went to the hospital.  We found Memaw’s room and went in.  It was just Mama and Memaw in the room.  I walked over to Memaw, put my hand on hers, leaned down and kissed her on the forehead…I told her, "I love you so much, Memaw!" and the tears came a little.  Not too much, though.  Then, I walked around the bed and gave my Mama a great big hug, and we cried together a little.  

Memaw was a little cold, but rigor mortis had not set in, so she still felt like she was alive, only sleeping.  Her eyes were slightly open, and she had a very peaceful look on her face.  

Later, when I thought about the fact that she was alone when she died, it occurred to me that this was not necessarily a bad thing.  I’ll explain.

When I was a child, I was terrified of losing the people I loved….okay, I still am!  I used to tell Memaw, "Memaw, you can never die!"  She would smile and say to me, "I’ll never die as long as I can see you living!"  Well, since she was in her room, alone, she couldn’t see any of us living…….so she kept her promise.

One of my most important roles in life is over now, and I’m a bit lost as to how to move on.  I  am still a son, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, and a cousin, though.  Plenty of people left with me.  I guess it’s time to transition from being one "grand" to another….from grandson to grandfather.  I was both, of course, but now that half of the equation is missing, I have more of my life to dedicate to being a grandfather, I guess.  And I so love my grandchildren!  

So this is what has been happening the last two weeks.  I’m ready for a rest.  The weather has been very hot, and the sun drains my energy quickly…and I’ve been out in the sun a whole lot, since Laurie was put into the hospital.  It’s almost like people say, "Aha!  Now his wife is occupied…now I can get him to do a billion things for me until she gets out!"  I don’t mind, except that there’s the same old struggle of when anyone asks me to do anything, Laurie’s first reaction is to shout, "NO!"

*Sighs*  Such is life.

I love you, and thank you for reading,

 

Herm

 

 

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