On Saying Goodbye

My grandmother was mercifully called home to the Lord’s arms yesterday after an epic battle with Alzheimer’s. For as long as I can remember, she suffered at the hand of this beastly demon. 

I grew up living with my grandmother (my father’s mother) and as I grew and matured, her affliction worsened in step. When it became too much for my family to care for her ever growing needs, she was moved into a nursing home. The past few months she had been moved to hospice and in the last week her breathing had become labored. Yesterday she breathed her last on this earth, and I have to believe charged headlong into her Savior’s arms, grateful at the very burden lifted from her physical body at last. 

Alzheimer’s is a taxing disease, on not only the individual but the family as well. The barrage of emotions wielded on a day to day basis are radical and at times in direct divergence of one another; pride and humility, sorrow and joy, fatigue and vigor.

I don’t have many memories of my grandmother as a child but what I do remember is her extravagant love for the piano. Even when all other mental faculties had long left her person, the desire and ability to play the piano remained. She played loudly, proudly, and intensely. I can even still picture the worn ivory keys that her hands danced upon from memory. 

Death is never easy, no matter how expected it may be.

I celebrate the life that she had as a mother, grandmother, and lover and follower of Christ.