Remembering

My husband's grandmother passed away tonight and I just have the need to write when things like this happen.

Grandma S. had no name to the in-laws.  My father in law didn't call her anything.  Ever.  I don't know how in the world he managed to get through nearly 40 years without calling her anything, but he did.  So I never knew what to call her.  And I didn't call her anything either. 

It was determined about a year ago that she had an aneurysm near her heart and they were doing scans every 6 months or so to make sure things were still "okay".  It was during the course of one of those scans back in September that she was diagnosed with lung cancer.  She lived about 2 hours from us but we saw her almost every weekend for 3 months while she was having tests, etc. here.  While she was in the hospital one of the times last fall I asked my husband to ask her what I should call her finally.  She said, "Well, I don't know!  Grandma."

I didn't feel so bad because not even she knew what she wanted to be called.

My husband and I had our three children very close together, the third of which was unplanned.  She told me in her kitchen one night that we should consider using "those protector" things that she and her husband had to use after the birth of my mother-in-law.  Nice.  I thought my husband was going to throw up everywhere when I told him that.

She definitely wasn't the most emotional person.  She laughed at things that weren't funny, ignored you most of the time and ALWAYS said what she was thinking, no matter what you might think in return.  Very typical of older people, I'm realizing.  (I'm looking forward to that point of my life.)  And she really liked her cats.  When she came to stay with us this fall we had just gotten a kitten.  She asked about that cat and was more protective of our kitten than she was our children.  She just didn't get attached to people so much.

But here's what is surprising me the most about her death. 

I'm truly filled with joy for her.  Since I met her nearly 14 years ago now, she has talked about wanting to go to Heaven.  Wishing she was in Heaven with her husband.  Tired of the pain she was experiencing and not wanting to be here anymore.  She preached the end times to anyone who would listen and didn't care, as I said, before, what you thought.  She was sure the end times would be approaching and that I would have to live through them.  And that she would not.

I'm grateful to have known her and have gotten to know her in these past 6 months.  And I'm grateful she is dancing with joy with her husband in the presence of Christ.