i’m not updating the site or going online at all much these days. My grandmother is near death now. i’ve temporarily dropped out of the all-class reunion project for my high school.

A few months ago, my grandmother’s speech had been getting more and more incoherent. She was saying things that didn’t make sense, like, “where are the babies?” “who are all those people?” and “I got left behind at the stadium yesterday.” She just didn’t know what she was talking about. It was horrible, at first trying to explain that she was having ‘a dream,’ then having to just go along with her, at the expense of feeling like we were hiding reality from her.

Now, her speech is all but completely evaporated.

A few days ago, her health started deteriorating even more rapidly than it had already been. For a couple of days, she couldn’t say but the first few words of a sentence. i feel so helpless. i know that she is trying to ask for things, or ask questions, but she couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t say more than the first three words. i told her to just give me the basic words (no articles, adjectives, etc.), but she couldn’t do that.

Then yesterday, all she could do was move her mouth, as if she was struggling to just do that alone. No words. Today, she couldn’t move her mouth at all. Or anything else.

i have never cried so much in my life. i can’t stand the thought of her wanting something and not being able to vocalise what it is, and then not getting it as a result. If there were something that would ease her suffering, and she couldn’t get it from us…

i wept and told her how much i love her. i thanked her, and told her that she had done good, had lived a good Life. i told her that i would always miss her and love her, and she she would be with me, and i with her, forever. i told her, though i could not tell if she could hear me or not, that i will never ever be ready or willing to let go of her, but that if she needed to leave her suffering behind, then she would have my blessing. All day i wept, and i smothered her with kisses, and i held her fragile little hand.

i both curse every minute of her pain, and rejoice in every sweet second of togetherness.

She’s been in and out of consciousness. Her breathing is sometimes labored, and her lungs are making a sound like they’re percolating. We’ve been told that’s called the “death rattle.”

Why do we love? What purpose is there in loving, when all is for nought, in the End? We are doomed to perish in tears and agony.

Yet i love her with all of my being.