She's Home Now

It has been a bitter sweet sort of day. I received a call early this afternoon from my dad and as soon as I answered the phone I knew exactly what he was about to tell me...that my grandma had passed away.

All day long I have had a mix of emotions. On the one hand, I am happy that she is now in Heaven with Jesus and my grandpa and great-grandparents, whom she has talked about many times in the past several months. I am happy that she is well again. She is not suffering. She is not bedridden. She is not in any sort of pain at all. She is probably dancing around and oh so excited to see her Savior and her loved ones who have gone on before her.

On the other hand, I am sad. I have tried to prepare myself for this day for the past few weeks. My family has known that this day was coming. Her body was telling us it would be soon. We were seeing signs of her passing this past weekend. It was important to all of us to spend as much time with her as we could. We all took turns sitting at her bedside and prayed that she sensed us and knew that we were there and we loved her. This may sound stupid but I wanted her to know how loved and appreciated she was but I also wanted her to know that we were proud of her fight to stay alive but that it was O. K. to go. We all wanted her to be well again and we knew that was not going to happen here on Earth.

It has only been less than a day since she passed and I miss her already. I miss hearing her voice and seeing her smile. I am saddened that my boys will never really know her as their great-grandma and how special she is to our family. I just try to continually remind myself that she lived a great, long life and is now happy and healthy in Heaven. I am able to find peace in the knowledge that I will one day see her again in Heaven.

Thank you all for your prayers and please continue to pray for my family this week as we celebrate Christmas and celebrate my grandma's life and the fact that she is Home now.

Grandma Update

My grandma has not recovered well from her partial hip replacement surgery last Sunday. While we were all very relieved that the surgery went so well, we did not realize how difficult the recovery process would be. We were told last Monday that the surgery is the easy part...the recovery is the difficult part.

She has not wanted to eat hardly at all this week. We were able to get some "Boost" energy shakes down her and a few bites from her meals but that isn't enough.

My family has probably had one of the toughest weeks this past week. There has been a lot of talking, question asking, decision making, crying and most importantly praying. We all want to do what is best for grandma.

Today we were notified that Hospice has been asked to step in. The plan is that Grandma will be discharged from the hospital into the care of a nursing home where Hospice will come in and help care for her. As you can imagine, it has been a very tough day for us all.

If you would all please pray for my family in the coming days and weeks, I would really appreciate it. We are all praying for the Lord's Will to be done. Please also pray for strength and health for my family as we are all spending as much time as we can with Grandma. We are all very worn and tired tonight.

It is never easy to let a loved one go, however, we are blessed with knowing that when it is Grandma's time, we know she will be going to Heaven to spend eternity with her Savior and that we will one day see her again.

My Grandma

Friday morning my mom called to tell me that my grandma had fallen out of bed early that morning at her assisted living place and had been taken to the ER where they discovered that she had a broken hip. My grandma will be 89 on Wednesday. So, as you can imagine, as a family, we were all very concerned.

This is not the first time she has fallen out of bed. You would think that we could simply buy some sort of bed rails to put on the side of her bed and all would be great...right?! Apparently, there is a law stating that bed rails are not permitted in assisted living homes or nursing homes. From my understanding there were some cases of some elderly people who got their feet caught on the rails and therefore rails are not allowed on the beds any more.

To make a very, very (I am seriously not exaggerating!) long and confusing story short, it was decided to do a partial hip replacement instead of a whole hip replacement because she hasn't been walking at all for the past few months and would not be able (and she would refuse!) to do any sort of rehab. Our goal is to have her be able to sit in a wheel chair instead of laying in bed for the rest of her life. We were told that if the surgery wasn't done, she would be in excruciating pain for the next 4 months. So, at 9 pm last night she had her surgery and I thank the Lord that she came through the surgery with no complications at all. The surgeon told us that everything went very smoothly, that it was a good Sunday!

My grandma will now be going to a nursing home after being released from the hospital where she will receive more care. She will not return to the assisted living place. She needs more care than they can give and to be honest we aren't too happy with the assisted living place, but that is another story. My mom and aunt have already picked a nursing home for her and as far as nursing homes go, this one seems to be one of the "good" ones.

As I close, I ask that you keep my grandma in your prayers. Please pray for her to heal well from the surgery. Please pray for my mom and aunt as they are going through all of the paperwork to make sure that the transition into the nursing home goes smoothly for my grandma and also pray for them as they deal with the emotional aspect of putting their mother in a nursing home.

My family thanks you in advance for your prayers.

Have a blessed week!