Dedicated

I want to dedicate this story to my late grandmother whom I love very much. She was an inspiration to me and I don't know how I will live without her. I love you Nana.

It happened so suddenly. They were sitting at the kitchen table playing cards when all of a sudden she grabbed her head and said, “Oh my god, I think I'm having a stroke.”

He rushed her to the hospital and they discovered that she had suffered from an aneurysm and it had caused two major blood vessels in her brain to rupture. They told him that they may be able to save her but she must be put into a medicine-induced coma. He agreed and through his tears he watched as they put her into sleep.

The doctors told him that she would have surgery in the morning to try and fix the ruptured vessels. He waited all night for her to show signs of response. They poked her to see if she would move and she did. The signs were pointing up.

At two o'clock in the morning the doctors checked her again. This time she was unresponsive. She was put onto a ventilator and declared brain dead. He was faced with the decision of whether or not to pull the plug but he never had to make it.

At ten forty-five in the morning she was declared dead. He ordered their children out and sat at her bedside, holding her lifeless hand.

“We've been together fifty years and I've never loved anyone else.”

When their children took him home, he stood staring blankly at the home that they had shared for half a century. Then the tears came. He cried for her, not because she was gone but because she left him behind. He slammed his fist on the table.

“This is not the way it was supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to leave me. I was supposed to go first.”

He sat alone in the dark living room, his mind racing through all of the memories that they had shared together. Her life was over and so now was his and all he could do was wait until it was time to be called home and rejoin his love in the folds of Heaven.

My grandmother died at ten forty-five am on November 8^th. I had to write how she died to help myself grieve. I'm sorry if you hate it, but I love her very much and I have to find a way to live on.

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