Working Through the Worry, Praying Through the Pain

What a crazy last week this has been. Crazy enough that I haven't even considered surfing the 'net, let alone blogging on it.

I'm swamped at work. For some reason, my co-workers (spread out over all five regions of the U.S.) decided to up their "blitz box" requests. This is a small complimentary 9x6x6 box filled with either a baking or pasta mix, replete with a glossy paperwork packet and cover letter, that is sent to either stores possibly adding new lines of our product, or prospective clients we're trying to court with a free sample. Normally I send out about 80 of these a month, putting the flat-packed boxes together myself, stuffing everything in it as neatly as possible, printing a FedEx label for it off their site, then recording the data into our database/scheduler.
Well, this last week I got almost 50 of these requests, each one imperative that it gets sent within a day or two. I've kept a lot of late hours, let's put it that way. And this doesn't even take into account the cookbook orders I get, usually 5 or 6 a day, which, since Click-N-Ship still won't send media mail, I have to package and cart down to the post office myself rather than having them picked up. The daily average on those have been at least a dozen. Arggh!

What else... well, a teething son who seems to bonk his head about every ten minutes, necessitating me dropping everything and running frantically over to comfort his wailing woe sure doesn't help. I know it's a process, this learning to crawl and pull himself up on stuff, and we've baby-proofed as much as possible, but dammit, the little guy is just precocious, I s'pose. And/or clumsy.

But let me dispense with the miscellany and get down to the real tragedy, the real reason my heart is aching too much for any typing to have gotten done as of late.

My grandmother is in the hospital for what we first thought was a heart attack, but after endless testing now seems to be some sort of internal bleeding thing. It breaks my heart to think that just now when I've finally become a source of pride to her, and my son is bringing her untold amounts of joy- that we very well may lose her. So I've been at KMC a lot, letting her hold Jameson when she feels strong enough, carrying on these painful one-way conversations that seem utterly inane to me, but I'm hoping she's listening and just liking the human contact. It hurts, though. God, it's tough to lose someone you love when you're actually in touch with your feelings enough to drown in them.

I've had people die in my arms from overdosing. I witnessed a point blank beach party shooting of a girl by her jealous teenaged boyfriend, a kid we all knew. I was 15. I spent that night in the shower until the water ran cold, scrubbing all the blood and bits of brain and bone that I swore I could still feel on me. I've walked in on other dead bodies here and there throughout the years, mostly drug-related; and of course both my older brother and my uncle have both committed suicide.

So there's been a lot of death in my life. Even me, spending time in a hospital bed pumped full of Narcan after an overdose, have been told I was clinically dead at one point. I'm no stranger to the Reaper.

But I'm begging God not to take my Grandma B from me now, not when we're just starting to get to know each other again. The roles have changed- it's now me who comes over and cleans her house, drives her on her errands, fights with her doctors and pharmacists when she's too timid to do it herself. I do most of the talking- she's not the same old spitfire bartending Seahawk fan who raised up three daughters and then had to take care of some of their offspring as well. She's quiet now; spends alot of time in front of the television, sometimes watching Westerns, sometimes just staring at the blank screen. I wonder what she thinks about, but when I ask, the one or two word responses just don't ring true. It's the stroke she had several years back, I know, but it doesn't make it any easier when I compare this virtual stranger to the woman who partially raised me, before I hit my teenaged years and was off and running, not to be raised by anyone anymore.

We all love her just the same. My mom is lost in her own alcoholism a bit too deeply to really devote the time away from her drinking that it would take to visit more often; my other aunt lives way over on an island off the coast of Washington; so my
Aunt Marcie and I are the ones who are there for Grandma these days, but I know the heartache is not something her and I hold an exclusive patent on. My cousins have all been to visit her in the hospital, sheepishly holding their heads down as they mutter excuses why it had been so long since they'd seen her prior to this. Same with the more distant relatives- aunts, uncles, in-laws.

I'm bracing myself for the worst, but I console myself by the fact that she was able to bond with her first great-grandchild (I was the last child, thirty years ago!) and that her and I become, if not truly close friends- due to her condition resulting from the stroke- at least close in many ways.

Thank You, Lord, for these last months of bonding with this amazing woman whose ancestral blood runs in my veins. Thank You for blessing us with the opportunity to share the joy of my son- I've loved seeing those huge smiles: one on her wrinkled face, one on his cherubic toothless one. If You choose to bring her home to You, I will understand, Father, since nothing in Your world happens on accident, but by Your design and divine timing. I only ask that You ease the pain of our loss by filling our hearts with the joy of memories of how she used to be, and with the peace of knowing she's passing on to her eternal reward.