My Second Grampa

On Friday last week, my second Grampa – my step-grandfather, to be exact – went home to heaven.

Since coming home from the hospital, I have been planning to write a long post about my own brush with my mortality. I had pregnancy-induced hypertension two days after my daughter was born, and nearly died.

I don’t say that lightly, and that is because I know the dangers of that particular sickness (I am still on blood pressure medication, although my surgeon hopes to have me off it by next week). The medical community still does not know what causes it, although they know how to recognize and treat it. It can’t be predicted and it doesn’t seem to have any particular triggers.

I was in the hospital only a day longer than I was originally going to stay, but it felt like an eternity. The dark hours of the night, during which I had anticipated snuggling into my big bed (thanks to having a midwife-assisted birth, I had the largest and nicest birthing suite) with my husband and my new baby – became pain-filled and scary, as I felt myself wavering unwillingly between this world and the next.

The thought of dying made me almost panicky, because I have so much left to do, and I have people to take care of, and so much more love to give them. I thought of all the things I’d left unfinished: knitting projects, a sink with dirty dishes, the current state of my character and my soul.

I told Troy, “I don’t want to die in a hospital,” while he tried not to cry. We were both feeling vulnerable and a little fearful, although neither of us wanted to be anything but strong for each other. We were stuffing down all the tears as much as we could, and forcing ourselves to believe that the medication I was on, as painful as it was to endure, was going to fix it, and that my doctors knew what they were doing. I willed myself to stay awake when I almost passed out earlier that morning (very early, sometime around three a.m.) from my body reacting badly to that same medication.

“I want to die at home,” I told him. My Grampa Del did just that.

He had been on oxygen for months, could hardly walk on his own (he HATED his walker), and suffered from heart problems and neuropathy. His spirits were nearly always up whenever I was able to see him, but I silently wondered how long he would be able to keep on living with so many things making it difficult for him to stay alive.

He got up to go to the bathroom, using his walker, and soon was saying that he was having trouble getting there. He ended up kneeling in the floor, with his head down on his walker, praying to God to just please help him, to make it a little easier… and my Father answered his prayer and took him home in the moment of his pain and his plea.

I’m crying right now as I write this, because I know not only that he’s free of pain and the burden of a body that kept breaking down; but that I was spared, to keep living and loving and praying that the day of my own death lies far from now. I miss him, and I am so thankful for my children and my husband, all of whom I love more than I can ever express.

My Grampa Del and my Grandpa Jim can now meet up and talk about the family they both shared. My first Grandpa died when I was ten, in January of 1989. Twenty years later, in the same month, my second Grampa is gone now too. Both of them were suffering before they died, and both of them deserve the rest they received.

I love you both, my grandfathers. Don’t stop watching over me, because I know how precious a thing life is. And please give the baby girl I lost last Easter a kiss for me.