A Little More About Me – Part III

Part I
Part II

Story II: The death of my grandmother

My grandmother, my dad’s mother, was my best friend growing up. I loved her beyond words and I was her favorite, so her death really affected me deeply. The really sad thing was that my mom and I were going to visit her the next weekend.

At the time, we lived in Arizona and my grandmother lived in California… so the drive there was about a day.

Well, I was at a friend’s house getting ready to have a sleep over party (I had just turned 13 the month before), when my mom called my friend’s parents. As soon as they got off the phone with her, they told me that I had to get my things because my mom was coming to pick me up. I asked why, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. So, I gathered my things and waited.

During my wait, my mind imagined everything it could be… but I just couldn’t figure it out. I became upset that I wasn’t going to be able to stay with my friends.

Once my mom got there, I kept asking her what was going on but she wouldn’t say anything. I asked her if I had done something wrong and she said no, but that was all she would say.

Finally, when we got home… we walked into the house and my mom told me to sit down. All of a sudden, like a flood as thick as blood, shot through my entire being. I looked up at my mom and said, “Who died?”.

She just stared at me with a shocked face…

Silence fell for about 30 seconds, though it felt like 30 minutes.

I asked, “Was it dad or grandma?”.

Again, silence with a stare.

Finally, after I thought I would never get an answer, she said, “Yes”…. “It was your grandma”.

Well, shock ran through my body and numbed my brain… I looked off so that I could digest all that she was about to say. I then asked, “What happened?”.

She then proceeded to tell me that my grandmother was on her way to pick up her social security check, and while crossing the street, she was hit by a car.

Well, that is all I knew until we met with my dad a couple days before the funeral. Apparently, my grandmother had hidden her check in the bottom of her purse and placed a small box of Kleenex on top of it so that my cousin, who was about 7 at the time, couldn’t find it… he had a bad habit of going through her things.

So, because she couldn’t see it and she was beginning to get Alzheimer’s… she forgot she put it there. Well, on her way to church – walking – she saw the SS office across the street and remembered that she thought she had not received her check for that month… so, she began to cross the street.

The street was a fairly busy street and in the median, there were some bushes. The driver never saw her until it was too late. She hit the front bumper, flew up to the window, cracked her head on the metal piece that separates the windshield from the side window and continued over the car until she came down onto the street.

She lay in a coma for a few hours while my dad said his good byes, then she died. My dad said that he was holding her hand and she squeezed it, but the doctors told him it was involuntary.

When I saw my grandmother at her viewing, it was the first time I had ever seen a dead person up close. I knew she wasn’t in that shell – it made me feel empty. I felt lost being in California without her there.

I went to her house and sat out front in her yard… she had these ½ stoop pillars that I would sit on as a young child and watch the birds. I tried to remember being with her and the conversations that we had. I knew that I wanted something to remember her by, so I took her nametag from when she would volunteer at the hospital. I still have it.

My little cousin, who is 6 years younger than I, was paranoid by her body. He didn’t want to go anywhere near her. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t her and it wouldn’t bite him, but he was 7.

So, that is more detail into that story. I will continue my history in a later post. Please subscribe to my blog so that you will not miss anything.

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