US meets UK

I spoke to my mom yesterday and the news was not so good.  My Nana (Dad’s mother) has been pretty ill for a while, but she’s always pulled through.  Unfortunately it was getting to the point where she wasn’t going to pull through, she’d been moved to a Hospice and the outlook wasn’t so good.

So not good that my mother said even if I did fly home I might not even make back in time to see her. Nick and I always say ” _____ is just a plane ride away”, and that if things were really bad we’d be able to be where we need to be.  I couldn’t believe that I was so out of control, that there was nothing I could really do.

There are so many things I wanted to tell her.  How much she meant to me, how she inspired me, how much I loved her.  Sometimes my Nana could be tough to get along with, but honestly, it made me love her all the more.  She set standards (no matter how absurd the seemed) and she stuck to them, she said what was on her mind and she didn’t apologize for it.  I think those qualities are really rare these days and I’ll miss her dearly.

I called the hospice so they could hold the phone up and she could hear me, but the people at the hospice didn’t understand what I was asking.  The woman just kept telling me that my Nana couldn’t speak and that I should come in if I wanted to speak to her.  I gave up trying to explain that I was in England, that I couldn’t make it there and just called my mother instead.  My father called me from her bedside and I was able to tell her how much I loved her, missed her and wished I could see her to give her a hug.  I honestly didn’t think it would be the last time I spoke to her, I planned on speaking to her the next day.

She passed away only a few hours after I spoke to her. I think I was still hoping she would pull through and I was still shocked by it. Even as I write this I’m constantly changing things to past tense for her. I didn’t know she had gone into hospice and in the span of only a few hours I found out she was in hospice, dying, and that she had passed away.

One of the reasons I was so excited to chose our venue is that it was literally down the street from her nursing home.  She had serious mobility issues, tired very easily and was in near constant pain so I was happy to pick the place that would mean the least amount of travel for her because I knew she’d want to be there for our wedding. I know Nick and I will find a way to honor her and her presence will be intensely missed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Wedding, expat life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.