How exactly does one pack when one has hopes of going to a music festival yet simultaneously expects to be going to a funeral instead?

We’re losing my grandmother.

There’s no other way to say it.  Actually, yes, there is.  We lost her a long time ago.  Dementia is a cruel fate.  It starts with forgetting to put the raisins in the fruitcake.  Then it progresses to misunderstanding intentions and forgetting basic facts.  It moves on to the inability to make rum cakes at Christmas, and eventually, in the blink of an eye, to phantom saddle bags left by nonexistent visitors.  Finally, it’s talking to long deceased love ones and suddenly not knowing how to suck through a straw.

Of course, as my brother says, the straw bit proves my grandmother is a die hard Alabama Crimson Tide fan:  Auburn fans never forget how to suck.

You know, it seems all there is lately is death.  My aunt, my husband’s grandmother, my psudo-grandfather, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett.  My in-laws are in the hospital more than they’re out these days.  I think we recently lost a fish, even.  You live your life trying to be positive, but at every turn, it’s reality.  It’s bad news.  It’s Walter Cronkite.  It’s allergies and the immediate fear that, oh God, is The G going to get pneumonia again?  For the sixth time in a year?

There are deadlocks and deadlines.  Deadweights and more deadlines.  Dead air and dead ends and did I mention the deadlines?  Drop dead deadlines, even.  They begin with ‘dead’ for a reason. 

Death.  Death death death.  Man.

And somehow it all comes down to this.  The deadlines have passed kicking and screaming.  I’m looking at a monumental road trip to Yankee territory as my reward.  Music and Broadway.  Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.  Arlo and Judy.  Allison Janney and Bret Michaels.  And yet, The Grim Black Being still looms.

Hospice has made a guess.  It’s sooner rather than later - much so - but surprises do happen.  Surprises.  We’ve used all our miracles on this one. 

Am I selfish to say I’m sick of the death and dying that keeps interfering with my living?  And am I horrible to ask you to pray, hope, whatever you do that it will be sooner rather than later?  I think we are all silently ready for It to be Over.  My grandmother included.  It’s been a very long, very hard road.  She’s been praying for relief from this life for months.  Years even.  She never wanted to live like this. 

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
Please take my nana to Heaven.