Abstract
As it turns out, my grandmother is still in this world.
After weeks of surviving an illness that came on suddenly and that is almost unknown in the elderly (Myasthenia Gravis), she came off the ventilator yesterday.
My very Christian family gathered around singing “Amazing Grace,” literally waiting for her to die. That is what was predicted up and down by every team of neurologists, cardiologists, internists, geriatricians, and CC nurses who have been attending her these last long 3 weeks.
As she came off the ventilator, her breath became shallow and labored. We encouraged her to relax and assured her she was okay. We sang. We held each other. We cried many, many tears.
And then she went “away” for a few minutes. She faded, and then she came back … and was strong. She cannot speak yet, as she has been on the ventilator, but she is able to write.
On her dry erase board in shaky large letters, out of her broken precious body came the words, “The angels came from Heaven and bathed me. My Lee [her husband, long dead] was there and he said I would be okay.”
If I was ever going to become a believer in a “God” it would have been the 12 hours I spent by my Nonie's side last night, being with each other in the utter dark, not knowing what was to come for her. Watching her struggle to relax, listening to her wretched “cough, cough, cough” with no result or relief, only to be wracked again in the next minutes to come, we comforted each other, and I remembered the beauty in life and in death.
She told me she was worried - her first uttered whispered words were, “I want to get WELL.” She wrote on her board, “Do I leave the hospital tomorrow?” She worried about me - “Are you okay?” So we sat, hour after hour, being together.
Any judgment she ever had for me or that I had for her (yes, my upbringing was never to her liking) is long, long gone. There is only love. Her love is awesome and pure and has always been there. I have simply not seen; and I will never doubt it again.
My agnosticism is not shaken. If there was ever a time she would wish for me to believe in her version of “God,” it would be now. But she did not ask me to. She does not need me to.
I don't know about God, but I do know about faith—faith that life is essentially good, that people are essentially good, that there is ultimate peace to be had, both now and eternally.
I am exhausted beyond coherent thought with the tears and the ups and downs of the last 10 days of her awful illness; and I cannot even begin to imagine what she has endured. At times I just want off of this roller coaster of this good news and then the bad to follow; hope and then no more. And lord knows she wants off!
I love her beyond words; and I thank her for reminding me that it is faith which pulls people through, that life is beautiful, that love is bigger than anything else we have to give each other. Four hours after I wrote this piece, my grandmother passed away.