My Grandmother Died

I wasn't ready for this.

I suppose that statement sounds absurd on its face, but the truth is that every death of someone close to me has come with substantial advance warning as their bodies gradually failed them. My paternal grandmother even chose the date and hour of her end so precisely that I could literally put Grandma Dies into my calendar a week before it happened.

This was different. It was sudden, and jarring, and just thinking about it makes me terribly sad.

My grandmother died suddenly on Friday, at home, alone. I don't know what the circumstances were yet, but I'm holding out hope that she was as surprised by her own death as I was when I received the phone call, or as my mother must have been when she dropped by and found her body on the floor. I can't shake the image of her struggling to stay alive, alone in her home with no one to hear her calls for help. No one should have to die like that. No one should have to find a loved one after that.

But she died. Alone. My wonderful, warm, loving, nurturing, grandmother, who spent so much of her life investing herself in the people she loved, died on the floor of her living room.

She was the last of my grandparents, but she was also my favourite. Don't misunderstand, I loved all of them: The Wise Old Man, The Impossible Caretaker, and The Unyielding Activist, but Grandma Lidia was the one I wanted to hug and never let go, the one I called regularly just to check in and make sure she knew she was loved. The world isn't just emptier without her, it feels darker, even faded, and I don't know what I can do about it.

I'm just so terribly sad right now.