A Grandmother's Comfort

Are any of us, old or young, ever ready to handle the sudden absence of someone we love? It is unquestionably hard to lose someone when they have been there for us everyday, loving us 100 times more than we ever gave back to them. At the age of 29, the first death I had to deal with was that of my grandmother.
I was a hot day in late August. The children were back in school and I was looking ahead to another year of girl scouts, basketball games, wrestling tournaments and homework deadlines. There would still be time for a few more trips to the riverbank for swimming and blackberry picking for homemade ice cream. Late summer and fall in the Oregon valleys are very pleasant. The day started out pretty typical for a Monday. My thirteen year old son had been giving me a bad time all week-end, which was plenty busy without the hassles, so dishes were piled all over the counters. I had just got the thirteen year old, Dean, and his sister, 8 year old Jenny, off to school and headed for the kitchen sink when the phone rang. My mother was trying to get my grandmother to go to the doctor because she was having pains in her neck and shoulder. My grandmother would not go unless I cam and got her; she would have had to take a taxi otherwise. My mother and grandmother had never learned how to drive and my dad and my husband were both working. My mother and grandmother were so happy when I was finally old enough to get driver's license. The three of us had great fun shopping going to yard sales together. My grandmother always like to tag along with me and my friends when we went to Elvis movies.

It was a good 20-minute drive to my mother's house. I did not show my exasperation and gazed at the dishes as I walked out the door. The doctor had me take my grandmother directly to the hospital. It seems she had been having angina pains and her heart was doing overtime (in layman's terms). I waited in the hospital for several hours while they took care of her and set her up in intensive care. When I was able to see her she gave me her purse (a small suitcase!) with all its' contents. She said she didn't want to keep it there and explained to me about an order she had placed for a gift for my son, Dean. If I had been more in tune with the spirit the bells would have gone off in my head right then. She knew she was going to die. I waited around quite a while watching the monitor in the nurse's station. Even then, in 1979, the

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