Sometimes I hate how attached we, as human beings, get to things, people, places, life.
My grandpa, or Pops as he was affectionately dubbed by my cousin, was one of my favorite people in this world.
I guess I need to start from the last day of September of 2015. He and my Mamaw drove from their home to my parents house for my brother’s 22nd birthday. The drive is right about half an hour both ways. No major issues other than when they went home, they got a little lost..no big deal, right? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
Fast forward about 8 weeks to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. BAM. Life changed. My grandmother found my Pops in the bathtub-dressed. Mind you, she is a little bit of nothing at maybe 5 feet tall and about 85lbs. He, however, is about 6’4′ and over 200 lbs. I have no idea how she got him in the car and got him to the ER. Only by the grace of God I am sure.
Thanksgiving 2015 was the first Thanksgiving without my grandpa in attendance. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Lewy Body Dementia.
Christmas was a little better. He was able to come to my uncle’s house and be with the family. Some people he recognized..others he didn’t.
January he was put on hospice care. At the end of January, his side of the family came to visit. My brother and my mom’s cousins played their guitars and sang for him for a couple of hours. Hearing my brother sing Hank Williams’s ‘I Saw the Light’ was such a good form of therapy for me; it helped calm my soul and put my mind at ease with the terrible disease that was making my grandfather into someone that I didn’t recognize.
Weeks came and went. Trips back and forth to see him and my grandmother were okay, nothing too dramatic. St. Patrick’s Day rolled around and they had a party for the residents- I made it about 10 minutes away from work and started crying. I had to turn around and go home. Easter, one of my very favorite days of the year was extremely hard this year. There was no sunrise- it was dark out that morning. The raising of the Lord didn’t hold the same joy that day as it has the past several years.
The last day of April is my grandmother’s birthday. My mom and I took her out to breakfast, I brought her a card and flowers. We had good conversation, a successful shopping outing, and a trip to see Pops. My mom said “Elyse, I want you to be prepared. He is not doing well.” I thought well, yeah, he hasn’t been doing well for a while but I nodded and said “okay, I’ll be prepared.” I wasn’t. He was in a wheelchair. Who was this man? He was not the man that was a towering prison warden, the man that bought me my first ice cream cone, took me to Disney World for the first time, was there for my baptism on Easter 2000, sat with me as I signed my letter of intent to run Cross Country and Track in college, and had supported me in every single thing, in every single way, and in every single moment.
Evidence of God’s abounding grace: Saturday May 7th- the whole family, the 10 of us got together a week late for my grandmother’s birthday because my cousin had been in St. Thomas for the last 6 months and was just getting home. We sat around the dinner table talking, laughing, and telling stories about Pops. After dinner we all went our separate ways.
Morning broke. Mom and her brother get the call: their servant-leader dad had passed away in his sleep.
Enter: the most challenging week of my very short 25 years on Earth. 