My Grand­mother was diag­nosed with liver and bowel can­cer in Sep­tem­ber. Today was her funeral. She is a Chris­t­ian and when my Uncle prayed with her on Novem­ber 10th, 2010 at 10:10pm she passed away. Her breath­ing was hoarse and she was gasp­ing for air for quite some time but when my Uncle prayed with her her breath­ing returned to nor­mal. A split sec­ond later she was gone.

I’ve never felt so much heartache in my life than what this made me feel. I was plan­ning to sing Slipped Away by Avril Lav­i­gne but I just couldn’t. I was feel­ing so much emo­tion that I would break down in front of everyone.

My Grand­mother was the most self­less per­son I can ever think of. She would play con­stantly with me when I was young even if it was the same thing over and over. I’m 17 now and she was doing the same thing with my 6 year old cousin. She never com­plained. Even when she was in the hos­pi­tal and in pain, or was uncom­fort­able, or when she lost con­trol of her blad­der, she wouldn’t tell any­one. She was very inde­pen­dent but maybe that was also her weakness.

At the funeral I talked to a woman who remem­bered me from when I was young. She told me to never for­get my Grand­mother and to keep her image in my head and heart. I told her this was a dif­fi­cult task because the image that is in both my head and my heart is the one the day before she died where she was nearly skin and bones. She held my hand and told me to remem­ber the best mem­ory I’ve ever had with her. I told her: “Susie and I always used to go to the ceme­tery after church with a bag of peanuts and feed the squir­rels and watch them. It was my favorite thing to do and I loved her for always shar­ing it with me.” By this time I was cry­ing. She looked into my eyes near tears her­self and said “then remem­ber those times.”

My friends showed up at the funeral for sup­port. I didn’t ask them to but there they were with a big bou­quet of flow­ers and some cards all in front of my fam­ily. It was so kind and so amaz­ing. I took a pic­ture of my flow­ers and placed the video of Slipped Away by Avril Lav­i­gne below.

My new lay­out goes out to Susie (Grand­mother) because pur­ple is her favorite color. She can’t come back to me but I can go to her.

Ques­tions

1. Have you lost someone/something that has made a huge impact on you?
2. (If yes) How long ago?
3. Do you know some­one who has lost someone/something? If yes, explain their situation.