Reality bites sometimes, especially when it hits close to home.....

 
Much better to go that way instead of the alternative. Not that it really gives you much to hang your hat on or anything...
 
mark, she was granted a peaceful, quiet passing. You were there to tell her goodbye. Take comfort in the fact that she was not alone.
 
I am happy to report I am doing pretty well. I can't really see any way this could have worked out better. Obviously, this is a hard time and nothing but time and going through the grief will help.

All the same, it's really sweet of her to have been such a tough old bird that she didn't complain about it, and we didn't know all this time she'd been suffering. I know she didn't want us worrying about her and while we could have handled it and would gladly have done so, she didn't want to put us though it, and she didn't.

As it is, I got to spend her last lucid day with her. She was an Alcoholic and had many years sober at the time of her death, and she always worried about me and my addiction, and she was so proud when I put my 9 month AA coin in her hand, and promised her that for her birthday on December 2nd, I would have a year clean and sober by the 8th, and that no matter where she would be, that will be my birthday present to her.

My father and her both worried many times in their lives, that my drug addiction would kill me and they would survive me. I was really hardcore whenever I was using drugs, but thankfully I suvived them, as no parent should have to survive their children. Unfortunately, my grandfather isn't so lucky. Both my mother, his oldest child, and her brother, his second oldest are now deceased. Bruce (my uncle) succumbed to Lou Gehrig's disease a couple of years ago.

On that last day on Thursday I held her hand a long time, and we talked, and we joked and laughed. The laughing made her cough so we had to take it easy, but we really had a nice time in those precious last moments. On the lobby wall at St. Joseph Hospital where she died, and ironically where she and I were both born, is this prayer, which is also in the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's commonly known as the 11th step prayer in AA. It was one of her favorites and I read it to her the last time I saw her. The link is to Sara McLachlan's singing renditon, the words are slightly different, and the text is from the AA 12x12, and it's the same as on the wall of the hospital, but the sentiment is the same....

St. Francis of Assisi said:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace! That where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted. To understand, than to be understood. To love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
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In the end, a time like this can never be easy, but I know her pain has ended, and she is with me forever in spirit. I cannot expect the pain to just go away, I have to go through it, but I am ok with it, and it ended so much better for me than when my father was taken and I never got to say goodbye. Thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and well wishes. You guys are all good people, when it really counts.
 
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