I had intended to stay in Lexington this weekend, just hanging around my apartment, but I ended up coming with Todd and the rest of his immediate family to his parents’ house. His grandmother, the last surviving grandparent actually, has cancer, and originally they were told she had about a year to live. However, in a surgery a few days ago, her intestine and a tumor both got punctured, and they changed that estimation to a few days. She’s still alive, though we don’t know for how much longer. Any time the phone rings around here, it gets silent and we all wait on pins and needles to hear if she’s passed away. The hospital where she’s at is in Florida, so discussion has been going on about whether it would be a waste of money to fly down there, because she might die before anyone arrived. Other family members are there with her, and they’re the ones that keep calling to give updates.

I came to give Todd support, but it’s been weird for me, really. The only person I’ve ever known that has died is an uncle of mine who passed away when I was maybe a preteen, and his was the only funeral I’ve attended. It just doesn’t seem real to me that Todd’s grandmother is dying, I think because of my lack of experience with death. I’ve been to this woman’s house, I’ve sat around her living room and made small talk, I’ve attended church with her. We all went to her house yesterday to feed the cat, water the plants, and just look over the place. Todd gave me a tour and pointed out which bedrooms were whose when his mom was a child, that sort of thing. There was discussion of what would happen to the place and all her possessions after she passed away, and it’s really kind of surreal to me. I’d be looking around the place at all her stuff, then it would hit me that the owner would never be back. Her life was just interrupted suddenly, too, by the trip to Florida: there was an unopened bag of caramels that Todd’s mom had brought over just last week sitting on the counter, the fridge is filled with food that’s still good, etc.

I guess I have this idea in my head that when a person dies, things are all neat and wrapped up, but this really shows they’re not. All her things are sitting just where she left them, and it’s weird to think that she’ll never come back and pick up where she left off. (Or at least that’s not very likely right now, considering her state, which isn’t good according to the phone calls that keep coming.) This whole experience so far has been pretty new to me. I myself have one grandparent still living, and Todd’s experience with losing his remaining grandmother is making me wonder how I would take it were my grandmother to die soon. What adds to the suckiness of this situation is that Todd’s other grandmother passed away just last year, so he’s kind of losing his last two grandparents back-to-back.

Edit: Todd called to say she died this morning. :(
17 March 2008