Grandma Sybil

After a whirlwind  of past 4 days spent in Fort Lauderdale, Florida I am back 🙂 for the most part anyway, after 4 days of at minimum a combined 24 hours of  sleep, my brain may or may not be still floating somewhere over Houston. Last week I got an 8 am phone call from my sister, a phone call everyone dreads. My grandmother, Sybil Carter, had suffered her 2nd stroke in two weeks. and it. was. not. looking. good. those six words changed my whole world.

I have been so fortunate to not have had to experience the death of a loved one, so those seemingly light words carried the weight of the world, so much so that my response to my sister’s revelation was pretty much nothing, I believe my exact word(s) were Okay. I hung up the phone and began my morning ritual, walked into the kitchen to grind some coffee beans all the while bombs exploding in my heart and in my head– I had no idea what to feel, I had never felt anything like this at all and the most I can equate it to is being dumped and having your heart crushed.  I’m not sure if it was delayed response because it was so early or just complete shock, but after what seemed like an hour (more likely  5 mins) I called her back, I asked for details and then began the waterworks.  What followed was days of what I can  only describe as immense despair coupled with intense scouring of plane tickets that were not $1300 and wondering aloud several times a day  what in the hell am I doing all the way up here? I found tickets the night before I left and began journey all the way down to Florida (10 hour flight). She is not dead but to be perfectly honest, she is not the grandma I remember. My stay included 9 hour stretches at the hospital by her side, spoon-feeding her and using a suctioning device on everything she choked on; I also tried to show her pieces of my life here in Seattle, the new dog we have, my wedding ring that she never got a good look at, videos that I had recorded on my phone, I wanted her to know that I’m alright and that we are doing just fine. All of her children made their way down to Florida, some hailing from as far as Maryland and no one knew what to expect. We had meetings, expectations, fears exposed, hopes revealed, tears shed and lots of laughter.   I  gained incredible perspective on the legacy she will one day leave behind, the children she raised, sculpted, molded and encouraged, that I am very proud to call my family.

I learned so much about my grandma this weekend, but most of all I learned that she is more than someone’s grandma or someone’s mom, in her lifetime Sybil possessed the integrity and grace that  I can only hope if I’m lucky I will have a tenth of.

Grandma and me at my reception