Release

Three years ago, I released my Nonnie. Quite suddenly and against any preference I had, she died. Today, with some warning that Grandma Mildred's time was drawing near, I release her as well. Last week, after not-her-first stroke, the nurses in her nursing home began a regimen of morphine designed to keep her pain level down so she could sleep peacefully rather than writhe in pain awake.

I made a quick turn-around trip to Dallas Sunday (leaving the boys here with Andrew) so I could see Grandma for what I was well aware might be the last time. I briefly entertained the idea of not going because I didn't want to see her in an unresponsive state. But a certainty that I was duty-bound to visit my father's mother in whatever state she existed changed my mind. What can I say? Should I ever give birth to nine children and find myself, decades later, nursing-home bound and unconscious, I hope that my granddaughter who only lived two hours away and had a willing-to-keep-the-kids husband would hold my hand for a while, and tell me goodbye. So I did. And it felt a little strange; even though Grandma's vision has been in steady decline for years and she hasn't lived completely independently for even more years, she's always been aware of who her family members were around her. So to sit next to her bed holding her hand while she slept a sleep from which I didn't expect her to wake was weird. And hard.

But go I did. And gone she is. I have every confidence she's in the presence of Jesus Himself, and I have the glorious hope of seeing her again someday. As for my memories? They are of a kind grandmother always eager to hug and kiss her grandchildren (and great-grands). Of family meals during the holidays that she would begin by holding hands with the people nearest her and beginning to sing a hymn. Of spending summer afternoons at her apartment eating Chicken-in-a-Biskit crackers and watching TV. Of a grandmother whose faith and love of her family were evident in the way she lived.

I'll miss her. I hate that my boys will have no memories of her. But I'll see her every time I look in a mirror, hear her when our family joins hands and sings a hymn, and carry her in my heart as an example of the loving, godly type of grandmother I hope to be. And she's in a better place. No regrets.