My Nana is dying

Ok, I've said it outloud (well, typed it) and i just have to start coping.
This amazing, sweet, kind, loving, and amazingly strong lady is at the end.

And I don't like it, not one bit.

Alzheimer's can suck it.

She has been ill the past week, with double pneumonia, etc. Nothing is making it better, in fact, some things have made it worse. But with Alzheimer's, who knows how long she had been ill.

She wanted to see me yesterday, so I went over.

And we said good bye.

Now, I might be wrong, she might pull out of this, I don't know what God's plans are.

But I wish I did, so I could prepare for it.

She held my hand, and talked to me, she's never lost ME, she always knows who I am. We talked about things we did together when I was younger. I spent A LOT of time with her growing up, she raised me. She taught me so many things, and she loved me, all the way.

This lady, and she is always a lady, is looking for her graceful exit.

She has endured so many things in her life, such amazingly hard and painful things.

Her husband walked out the door with another woman on Christmas day, when my mom was 16, and my uncle was 15. She was left, in the early 60's no less, to face the stigma of divorce, raise two children, keep a roof over their heads, and keep it all together.

My mom married my dad 2 years later, and she watched as my parents suffered loss after loss after loss (I could go on with this) of pregnancies. Then, my dad was drafted into the Vietnam war. Where he was shot, nearly killed, and paralyzed. At 24.

Three months later, my uncle, at age 20, left for Vietnam.
And he came home in a coffin. Wounded on his 21st birthday no less, lingered for days.
Killed in action

My mom said she didn't think she would live through that.

She survived all that, lived through it, to be there for my brother and I, well, mostly me, my brother didn't stay with her as I did. Didn't NEED her like I did.

And then she was swinddled by a man, for years, for her money. The money she had invested and squirrled away for my mom, my brother and I. In secret, trying to leave us something.
He hid her from us, and only when she was at her very worst, did he call up and give her "back"

And now, 2 years later, she tells me, it's my time to go. I'm ok with it, she says. I'm worried about your mom though.

She says "I've got people to see" and looks up.

I know she'll be in heaven. And that makes me feel better.

But, I'm just not ready. And it doesn't really make any sense, if you think about it.

She has no idea if you have been there from one day to the next. Or really anything else. She is confused, combative, and becoming unladylike, which would just KILL MY Nana to know.

So, in reality, she isn't my Nana. She is, but she isn't.

I just kept hoping she'd pop out of this, I know, how stupid. That she would wake up or something, and be able to talk to me about all the things that we used to talk about. That she would remember that I had been there. That she felt BETTER. But, it didn't happen, it isn't going to happen, and that is a big part of why I am sad.

We planned her funeral tonight. At 93, she doesn't have many left that would attend. But that's ok. Those of us that are here, will celebrate her life.

But I have learned something in this evening, of talking over plans with my mom.

Imay not be her blood (I'm adopted) but I am HER.

I am opinionated.

I am caring, loving, and kind.

I am passionate, helpful, and bull headed.

I don't give up.

Which makes me her. and I am so thankful for that.

When I left her room last night, she said, clear as day, as she had been muttering and mumbling most of the time

"Mandi, have FUN with your kids"

I know she didn't get to do that much, thatshe didn't get to enjoy them as much as she would have liked.

and I will. Because she taught me how.