S
orry, this post turned into a novel. Well now that I have had a week to process everything, I figured that it was time to put hand to computer and get all of my thoughts out.
It all started the week of June 5th, Brandon's Grandmother had to be admitted to the hospital because she was unresponsive when the nursing home staff came to wake her up. She was out of the hospital a couple of days later, so we thought that we were out of the woods, but I made sure that we had a sub for primary just in case. Grandma Sparks returned to the hospital Thursday night which is when she decided that she did not want any heroic measures taken to save her life. We were unsure if we needed to go over to Olympia because were not getting a start answer out of Brandon's mom. I kept getting the promoting that we needed to go over, but Brandon said that we would play it by ear.
So, we made plans to go to Toppinish and go to the Yakima Nation Cultural Center Restaurant for their once of month all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. We made it through dinner and ran our errands around Yakima, and we were getting ready to head back to Ellensburg, when we got a text message, saying that Grandma wasn't doing very well and that she would be returning to her the nursing home on Saturday and that they would be meeting with the hospice nurse to setup hospice. So, we decided that it was best to head to Olympia, so that we could say goodbye to Grandma. We didn't leave Ellensburg until 11:30pm and we arrived in Olympia at 2am but didn't actually go to bed until 3:30am.
The next day (Saturday June 11th), we got up at 9:30 because we had to drive down to Chehalis to where Grandma's nursing home was to meet the hospice nurse at noon. We got down their and the hospice nurse was running late so we had a few minutes to spend some time with Grandma. She did not look good at all. This really hit me hard because I had lost my Grandma not even a month before. I had not had the opportunity to see my grandma go down hill because I said goodbye to her at Christmas and never got to see her again. All of the emotions that I had regarding my Grandma's death a month earlier came flooding to the surface. So, while Brandon, his mom and aunt went to meet with the hospice nurse. It was really sad to be in Grandma's room and realize I was doing the exact same thing in December with my Grandma, just sitting there with my sewing.
Brandon and his family finished meeting with the hospice nurse, they all returned to Grandma's room. As a family, we just kind of sat/stood there not really knowing what to do. Brandon's aunt asked if she could offer up a prayer which we were fine with. Then Brandon decided to ask Grandma if he could give her a blessing. She immediately nodded her head yes. Brandon gave her the blessing and it was a very powerful experince for him. At the beginning of the blessing there was a flash of light, then he saw a person he had never seen before, we are guessing that it was his grandfather who died before Brandon was born, then at the end of the blessing there was another flash of light. We believe this is when Grandma's spirit left the earth because she was not with it at all. We were very surprised that she made it through the night.
After that we went to get some food because none of us had any food that day. We went to our favorite restuarent Country Cousin. It was a good meal but very different at the same time. We returned to Olympia for some down time before heading over to his aunt and uncle's apartment for dinner. We stayed there until 1am and didn't go to bed until 2am. Needless to say we were all running on little sleep.
Then, the next morning we were getting up around 10am to go see grandma again. Then we got the phone call at 10:45 that grandma had passed. This was a great shock to us but not a huge surprise. We finished getting ready and went down to say our goodbyes to grandma. This was really hard for me because I had never seen a dead body before. We stayed for awhile to say our goodbyes and it just seemed like the perfect time to play the hymn, God be with you until we meet again. It brought us all comfort and made us realize that we will be reunited with Grandma in heaven.
After we said our goodbyes, it was time to start making funeral arrangements. Lets just say this is when things went from bad to awful. The family went into all out war.
First, of all the funeral director failed to mention that there was a $200 fee for meeting with him on Sunday. If Brandon's aunt hadn't been with Brandon and his mom would have just walked and found someone else to do the funeral. The other problem was that Brandon's Aunt and Unvle are declairing bankruptcy for the third time and cannot incure any new debts until after the 10th of July. Which means that Brandon's mom had to pay for everything.
Then we started actually talking about what we wanted to do for the funeral, which made things even worse. Because one side of the family is LDS while the other side of the family isn't. We simply requested that Brandon bless the grave and play the song God be with until we meet again. This was unaccepatable to Brandon's aunt and uncle because we were blocking grandma was getting into heaven. Things just got worse. I stayed out of it and just focused on putting grandma to rest. I think that the worse thing that was said was when Brandon's uncle compared Brandon's mom to his ex-wife.
We are all trying to heal, it is still unknown how long it will take to repair the family relationships but hopefull with time everything will be alright.
