The inevitable

Today I had the good fortune of getting to spend the day with my grandparents and to realize that they are dying. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh or unfeeling. It's actually said with a feeling that's hard to convey through type. It was a hard thing to face really, although it's not because I'm that close with them. I love and care about them but the part that is the hardest is seeing them in such a deteriorated state while it's still easy to remember the days when we went shopping, or flying kites, or baking cookies. I've worked in a nursing home and I've seen "old" people that are other people's grandparents, but those people had only ever been "old" and deteriorating to me, I never knew them as anything else. Having known Grandma and Grandpa to be healthier and active, and in their right minds, I feel so sorry for them having to exist as they are now. Grandpa is just slow and awkward. His health is not good, but it's a lot of little things that just make living hard now. For Grandma it's cancer on top of many years of inactivity and unhealthy eating. She's lost a lot of weight now, but instead of looking healthier, she just looks wasted and tired. And she's on so many meds that she's confused and has a hard time making the right words come out. Repeating herself and repeating "what can I say?" as some sort of mournful tick. I was unable to determine or find anyone else that knew how much Grandma is still in there and how much is the drugs that are messing up her mind. And I felt sorry for her; so sorry for how she used to be and how she would hate to see herself like this.
I know, because I would hate to see myself like that. I sat there thinking, I don't want to get old. I don't want my life to go on, if that's all there is to living. Just let me go quietly in my sleep, don't drag it out. It made me resolve with new feeling to healthful eating and living. What's a piece of pie compared to years of useful activity and health? There are things like some cancers that you can't avoid and those scare me. Just let me go....but then there is also a lot of blessing that can be passed on to others in an illness that is passed through depending on the grace of God. If that is my lot, then I just pray for the strength of faith to go through it with such a vision and a focus on the reality of eternity in comparison. That's the other part that is so sad, that I'm not sure my grandparents have that certainty. I see in Grandma a tired woman who feels alone and hopeless. I tried to speak to her of hope today; of forgiveness and having a certainty of heaven and she said "do you see how those knobs on the commode are all different?" Funny yes, but also frightening. Did I miss my chance? Did my fear of speaking the truth to my own grandma contribute to where she is now and where she will be at the end? Could I have helped her to have peace right now and a security in the arms of God? I went today with a lot of prayers that I would have the right words to say and the courage to say them so that Grandma and I could both be confident of her heavenly home. But she's not coherent enough to speak of it and I'm afraid I let fear rule me too long. I know that God is bigger than me and I need to obey what I know to be right right now and trust him. But I struggle with wondering how things might be different now if I had spoken up sooner. I'm sorry Grandma.
In the meantime, they only way I really know to deal with all of this is just to laugh at the "chemo fog" because she really did say some random stuff such as asking me if many geese fly to the lake to skate? And telling me which water jug was better because the snowmobilers said that the other one leaked. Oh my.