Hope & Question

a new phase

my grandmother is moving into an assisted living place on friday. fortunately, i get to go there this weekend to be with her. this makes me really sad. it also seems unfair. i know it's life. i know it happens. i've known that it was coming for a little while. non of that makes it easier. if it's hard for me, i can't imagine how it is for my mother (her mother is the one going through the transition) and my sister (she lives with my grandparents). i've made the choice to be away, to further my education and pursue what i believe is God's will for my life. my family has always been supportive of my decisions to do this. yet it is times like these that make it hard to be away and in rushes thoughts of 'what ifs' and feelings of guilt and selfishness. so i know those aren't from God, so I try to dispell them as soon as they rear their ugly little heads (i'm trying to ponder what facial expressions would be on the heads of a creature called 'guilt' and an animal named "selfishness"). instead i try and think of all the amazing times i was blessed to have with my grandparents and all of the incredible truths they taught me through their lives and words.
the saddest thing i've heard so far, coming from my granddad, said to my mother after he realized what was going on (he will stay at the house until a room opens for him at the assisted living place): "you don't blame me, do you?" as if he'd failed to be the provider and care-taker of my grandmother, his wife of 61 years. How sad. Of course there's no blame.
The good thing is that my grandmother is the one who suggested the move and she is ready. The hard thing is that she is fine mentally, just running down physically. It's not the case for my granddad. He's getting more confused each day and his memory is going. That makes my heart hurt.
I know that death is inevitable. I even have the hope of them having it better in heaven. But the whole death thing is not natural. It's not what God desired. So it's hard and sad and weird. Selfishly, I think the thing that makes me the saddest is the chance that whoever becomes my family will not know the wonderful legacy, the beautiful, Godly, loving, wise people God gave me as grandparents. I know they wouldn't desire it one second, but I do wish (and used to think) that they would live forever...

posted by Loren @ 12:32 PM