Life Goes On

This post is about my grandmother dying. There was a post on Zee's forum about when does a dying person know when to let go....what do they need to hear to feel safe to leave this world.

This is sort of a short form of these feelings and events that happened as it was such an intense time and I would like to write about it further, just not at this time.

My grandmother was quite ill with infection for a few months and in the hospital. (she ended up getting a worse infection and died) Anyway...for days we were on death watch knowing that she was most likely dying. She was really near the end and they took her off her oxygen and the doctor felt she would go really quickly. I had gone home knowing she was going to die in the night (after having been mostly there for days) but when my sister (who had stayed with her) called me in the morning, she was still breathing..barely, but still breathing. Everyone commented how she was holding on. One of the nurses had said that sometimes people hold on until a certain person comes from far away to say goodbye, or even a certain person leaves the room etc. I told my sister to tell her that we will take good care of Papa and that we would miss her but its ok to let go. She said ok..we were both in tears. She called me back a half hour later and she said about 20 minutes after telling her that, she died. I do think people hold on for certain reasons...This was my first experience with death and I totally saw how Im not afraid my death, its more the sadness of others still alive. I think we try so hard to keep people alive (as we should) but at some point I think its ok to let them know its ok to go and that we will be fine. It was sort of weird that day...I went to see my grandmother after she died....I looked outside, the grass was still green, people were laughing and walking around...and I thought, boy, life really does go on! Sadly, my Papa died 6 weeks later.