At A Loss

I have learned that life is so very sacred because life is so very short although I offer a counter argument. For some is life too long?

I have never had a firm or normal parental system. I was raised a good deal by my grandmother so I have always been a lot closer to her more so than my own parents. I never really had much of any type of relationship with my parents that become that meaningful. In good times and in bad the one person who has always been constantly there for me is my grandmother. My grandmother is 87 years old. She has lived a full life and her health isn’t that great. She is at a point where she just doesn’t want to go on.

I have many mixed feelings about this. She is one of the only support systems that I have had for a great deal of my life. When it is her time to go I will be devastated especially because it has only been six months since I lost my father. Lately my fears have been coming to fruition. On October 31st my grandmother was admitted into the hospital with a horrible case of pneumonia and pancreatitis. She was in the hospital until November 6th. The hospital made her very weak and dependent. When she got home she stumbled on some stairs and went shin first into the lip of a concrete stair. She felt an incredible pain and said that she thought she was bleeding. The skin however wasn’t bleeding, what was happening was that a large hematoma was expanding in her lower leg. She was rushed back into the hospital and was in incredible pain. The pain was being caused because the hematoma was separating the epidermis from the muscle tissue and putting extreme pressure on the skin. They had to perform surgery to drain the area and unfortunately in the amount of area that was affected the skin tore because of how thin it was. She is now still in the hospital and in horrible spirits, I can’t say that I blame her at all.

My issue now is that she doesn’t have the will to live and being the one person that lives with her and takes care of her puts an incredible amount of pressure on me. Unfortunately when the day comes that it is her time I will be the most likely one to find her. The idea of that scares me. I love my grandmother and I really just want her to be happy, I want her to be at peace. She derives no joy from the life that she lives right now. When she is home she is pretty much stuck inside to relive the same mundane routine each and everyday. To me that is no way of living. I know to some this is going to come off really morbid all this talk of death.

Just because a person is living does not make them truly alive. When someone loses the will to live it’s only a matter of time. She really just doesn’t have it in her to fight. I think part of the reason is just six months ago she had to bury her own son, my father. A child should never predecease their own parents. The loss of a child has really taken its toll on her, I know she is depressed but she doesn’t believe in antidepressants or therapy.

I feel as though she truly blames herself for my fathers death. Not directly but more as a cause and effect. Maybe she feels as though if my grandfather and her were there for him when he was younger he never would have gotten into drugs and alcohol as hard as he did. I try to have her not dwell on the past because there is nothing that can change it. The problem is that when all you do is sit in the house all day unable to do anything you do a lot of thinking, and a lot of over thinking. I am writing just to get my thoughts out there because I am completely confused in this situation and I don’t know what to think. My fiancee has been great being there for me and I have been doing so much to try and take my mind off things but it only goes so far. I just wish I knew how to make her happy. I wish I knew how to relieve this pressure that I feel. I just don’t know what to do.

Advertisement