Already a Year Later

January 7, 2008. It was one year ago Wednesday that my grandma passed away. It's hard to believe a year has already gone by because its seems like it just happened last month. Sometimes it's hard to believe it happened at all. It was unexpected. The whole family was at my grandma's house for Christmas Eve and Christmas a year ago. She was so happy to have us there and seemed to be doing really well. She got sick and went into the hospital on December 30. As it would turn out, her body was attacking itself. Her spleen was producing antibodies that were attacking her red blood cells. The doctors tried all sorts of different treatments, but most of them were only temporary fixes. The one thing they felt would really help was to do surgery to remove her spleen. The difficult part was that they were never able to keep her red blood cell count up for her to be stable enough for surgery. She passed at the end of a long, emotional, and frustrating week.

I still think about her often. I was lucky to live very close to her (about an hour away) during the last several years so it meant lots of Saturday trips over to visit. And while none of us were ready to let her go just yet, one of the things that has helped me in the healing process is knowing that she was ready. At some point, she had purchased a small notebook and written very specific instructions in it about after she was gone. One of the things she had written has stuck with me. She wrote that she did not want us to be sad because she was ready to be with my grandfather and that she missed him so much. He had passed 5 years prior, and he was my grandmother's best friend for 50+ years.

As I think about my grandmother this week, here are some of the memories that stick with me:

• Learning to drive the old pickup truck on the country roads in southern Illinois when I was 11. We would go on two drives a day. She grabbed the steering wheel a lot back then. I think I even drove into the ditch once.
• Filling up a brown bag of candy after visiting them when we were young. They ran a small country "convenience" store and had an awesome selection of candy.
• Her infectious laugh. I can't describe it, but for those people who knew her you know about her laugh.
• That she put money in the Easter Eggs! And not just coins either.
• Scratching off instant lottery tickets on Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember. Nobody ever won much money, and she was always so surprised by that.
• How she could play her 12 bingo cards and still see that I've missed a number on one of the four I'm trying to play. And this was when I was like 25! That was serious business cause we were playing for money at the Knights of Columbus. And also how she would be annoyed by having to split a $ 500 bingo pot with the other person who hit it on the same number.
• That she made the best apple pie I have ever eaten and ever will eat.
• How excited she was when I told her she was going to be a great-grandmother.
• How much she loved my grandfather. Especially in the last couple years of his life when she devoted herelf to taking care of him.
• How unselfish and giving she was. She never asked for anything, but gave everything.
• Christmas morning 2007 sitting around her kitchen table for a couple of hours just talking and playing with Andrew.
• That she was probably more faithful and devoted to her church and her God than anyone I have ever known