02-25-04 - 1:50 p.m.

Number three on the Top Ten List was brought to you by Cyndi Lauper. We all know what this song is about...

Good times.

Funny Name. Serious entry.

Right after my Grandma died, I told the story of her death to anyone who would listen, because it was immensely theraputic for me. "Have you ever seen anyone die?" I would ask when I was through. They usually replied with a slow shake of their head. "It isn't pretty."

I was with my Grandmother the day that she died.

She had cancer for sixteen years before it finally got the best of her. Cancer of the everything. Lungs, breasts, bones, you name it. She's had tumors removed from numerous parts of her body, and when she was at her worst, the tumors were wrapped around the bones in her leg, below the knee, and she was in constant discomfort.

I remember the Christmas before she died, she was bed-ridden, and she was the person who usually did the cooking. In fact, she was the glue that held our holidays together. But as for now, we were concerned about how the food would be cooked without the special Grandma ingredient.

My mom bought a baby moniter, and my Grandma spoke with her raspy voice the recipes and cooking instructions, as we listened on the other end, doing as she said. We all tried to have a good time, but it wasn't the same.

On Christmas day, we were determined to get her out of that bed somehow and have her with all of us in the family room, so my two uncles (my mom's brothers) took her wheelchair upstairs and carefully helped her into it. I was so scared that they were going to drop her as they each carried one side of the wheelchair with her in it down the stairs of her home. She winced with every step, but she was glad to be with her family.

I watched her, remembering what she used to be like during the holidays. She'd have a big, gawdy bow in her dyed red hair (for the longest time, I thought she was a natural red-head) and an over-sized knit sweater on over stretch-pants, and with a smile on her face, she would be the center of attention.

Now, people almost tried to avoid talking too much about her because it hurt us just to look at her. Her hair was a wiry mess of gray wool, her body frail, and bony. Her lips would draw themselves into a wicked shape so that she could cough into her hand without causing her too much pain. I wept inside, but I thought that she would never die.

Then, she got worse. Then, she got better. Then, I was at work one night and I received a phone call from my mother, telling me I'd better come over to Grandma's after work because it looked "like she wasn't going to make it."

I said alright, that I would be over there as soon as I could, but it never really hit me. I had heard this a few times before, and had always heard her voice the next morning.

I remember that voice very clearly. Sometimes, I would be sitting with her, me on the couch and her laying in bed, as always, and we were watching a crime show. The show was very interesting, and I was talking with her about it. I was doing most of the talking and she would utter soft responses once in a while.

Sometimes I would ask her a question and she would fall asleep in the middle of her reply. I would choke down the knot in my throat and turn back toward the television, trying to push it out of my mind. But I knew.

I left work and drove to my Grandmother's house to find my uncles and aunt, grandpa, and mom and a nurse of sorts surrounding her bed. My mother was crying.

The nurse said that we should just keep smiling and hold her hands and remember that she is happy that we are there with her.

She didn't look happy. She looked drugged and out of it, and she didn't respond to anything.

After about thirty minutes of grueling silence slowly crept by, her breathing started to change. It was no longer soft, but hard and gurgly-sounding, and very rhythmic. Her tiny body shook with every hard breath, and my grandfather began to cry. He he held her arm and he told her he loved her right into her ear, but we suspected that she couldn't hear him. She was dying.

I didn't know what to think. I watched as the hard, deep, rhythmic breaths subsided and she breathed a few soft breaths before her mouth seemed to slam shut, and her body did a little jolt. She went silent and my mother and I just looked at each other.

"Time of death, 2:35am," the nurse said, looking at her watch.

My uncle Johnny, who had been stoic the entire time, left the room, and we could hear him sobbing. My grandfather was a howling mess. I didn't know what to think. I couldn't cry.

Later, it would be a different story. I cried endlessly, it seemed. I would imagine the scene of her death over and over. It haunted me, and I can still remember it very boldly.

The next few days were hard. It was February 23rd and I was going to graduate High School in three months, and my Grandmother wouldn't be there to see it.

Even now, I wish she were alive to see how I am doing. I wish she could see me in College and be proud of me. I wish Colt could meet her because she is a really cool person. I really wish she were still around for all of the holidays.

Several holidays passed by after her death and our family slapped together half-assed attempts to visit at my Grandma's house (there was now only my grandfather now, but I still called it "Grandma's house") but we all knew it wasn't going to work out. Soon, we all stopped visiting.

I used to go see my Grandmother every weekend, and now I haven't been to that house in months. The truth is, my grandpa is not a nice man, but I won't go into that. That's another story entirely and not suitable for this diary.

My mother learned a lot from her parents about how to be a bad parent. My grandfather is a cheap, perverted computer engineer who never made any connection with his children and saw them as money pits, and my Grandmother was always going out on the town. Truth is, she was a much better Grandmother than she was a mother.

My grandparents raised four very abnormal people. My uncle Raymond lives in Africa with his new wife and hasn't talked to his family in years, except for the small wedding in Washington, D.C. My aunt is a selfish, conniving nut-case on welfare with two children from two different guys who are both in jail. My uncle Johnny is a recovering coke addict who can't seem to stop dating strippers. My mother is the most normal of them all, and honestly, I don't know how she pulled through.

Maybe it's because she had me at age sixteen and got married at age twenty, so she had to grow up and take responsibility of her life.

My mom used to tell me stories of the stupid things that her parents would do when they were growing up, speculating that they contributed to the abnormal lives of her siblings.

It isn't that my Grandmother let her four children do whatever they wanted; it's more that she just didn't pay attention at all. As a result, my mother got knocked up at fifteen, going on sixteen, and wasn't comfortable enough to tell her parents about it until she was five months pregnant. Her parents paid so little attention to her that she wore big shirts and they never noticed. When she told them, she was sent to an all-girl boarding school.

Because of the lack of pre-natal care, my mother had Toxemia when I was born, and I had to be in an incubator until we were both deemed healthy.

I remember a lot of the neat things my mom did for me in Elementary School when we lived in Florida. I don't have a good memory, but I have blurry flashes of things stored in my mental filing cabinet.

I remember when I was about five years old and in Kindergarten and my teacher told all of us that we had to bring a towel to class because we would be doing an art project. I was so proud of my Mickey Mouse towel because my mom had stitched my name into the corner in purple string. Everyone else had their name markered on the tag of their towel.

I remember my mom buying me my first set of Encyclopedias and how excited I was to read them. She always turned my attention toward educational entertainment. Sure, I had the occasional G.I. Joe and Ninja Turtle action figure, but I had a lot of toys that were quiz games and I had a ton of books. I guess my mom was just trying to do the things that her mother didn't do.

Despite the fact that I got punished by getting whipped with a skinny leather belt until I was fourteen years old, and despite the fact that during my more promiscuous Junior High/early High School years, my mother told me she wished that I weren't her daughter, I think that she did a wonderful job raising me.

I used to hate her. She was ridiculously strict. But she would always tell me that I would look back on her over-protective ways and thank her for it. And she's pretty much right. I hope I'm half the mother she is.

I guess I am finished. This was very cathartic for me, and I will be doing this refect-on-the-past thing more often, I think. I have a few memories that I don't want to lose.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Until next time - Go kiss all of the important women in your life. Women don't last forever.

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