(no subject)

Ten years ago this week, Ray and I went to Milwaukee to visit my parents for Father's Day weekend. On Sunday, just before leaving town, we went to the nursing home to visit Grandma. She'd been suffering from dementia of some sort--it was never diagnosed, but I suspect Alzheimer's--for a while, and her physical health was also failing rapidly. She welcomed Ray to the family, and had somewhat more lucid conversations with us than I'd witnessed for some time. My father corroborates this: he'd been visiting her at least weekly, and this was her at her best in a year or so.

Even so, little of what she said made sense. However, one sentence was very clear. "I don't like it here."

Dad told her, "You don't have to stay here if you don't want to."

Ray and I weren't home in St Louis an hour when we got a phone call from Dad. Grandma had died quietly shortly after we left. He thinks she didn't want to live anymore, but he'd told her I was coming to visit: she waited for me to make that last visit and then just let go.

Old news, but I'm crying now all the same.

Grandma Hazel, 1/11/1911 - 6/15/1997