We just returned from Gram’s funeral in New York. I feel bad that I didn’t visit her in the nursing home before she passed.

Last time we spoke, I said I was coming to visit, but I never actually did. My mom had explained to me that her mother had been on a recent steep decline with some sort of blockage in her system, and that she was almost black in color, which was hard to imagine, because Gram was always fair skinned with pink cheeks, her face matching her short, round figure. I wanted to visit, but our airplane was in the shop, so Lou couldn’t fly me up, and he insisted that I not drive. Despite the fact that she was 90, he assumed it was just a false alarm, and that my family was over-reacting about her condition.
Hopefully she is happier now. I believe that once your body dies, your eternal spirit continues on in peace, yet with a clear vision of your human life and your loved ones, and that most souls are able to see where they became off-purpose and disconnected from love. I believe that they forgive and want forgiveness for the errors and shortcomings while in bodily form. Most of my memories of Gram are not of happy times, but of conflict and issues. From my perspective, she and Aunt Mamie argued their entire lives, yet Mamie was always there looking out for her sister, trying to make her happy, right up until her own death. My mom seemed to never be able to do enough to satisfy her mother either. We’d visit her for hours, and yet we couldn’t leave without hearing how short the time had been, and couldn’t we come again soon when we could stay longer. I found it difficult to ever become emotionally close to my grandmother when I could see how much she upset both Mamie and my parents She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she vehemently disliked my father, who was only six years her junior.

Actually, it’s my dad I’m worried about now. He just turned 84, so it’s natural for him to have less energy, but I knew something was really wrong when he didn’t have the strength to come to the airport to meet our plane when we flew in for Gram’s funeral. When I walked into my parents’ house, he was sleeping in a reclining chair in the darkened living room, and I immediately had a clear image of him dead. We are waiting on test results to find out why he is so beat.