I remember her as quite the disciplinarian. She favored boys over girls. Oddly, she favored her children over her grandchildren.
Tirelessly, she ran an efficient household for my grandfather. They were soulmates and shared a lifetime of love.
I can't say I'm upset over her passing. In fact, I'm glad that she doesn't have to suffer this loneliness anymore.
She gave up on living when he died. She wasn't there with him. But at the moment he gasped his last, she somehow knew. Then she retreated into her own little world and shut out everyone else. She grew skeletal. Her face shrunk and became pallid. Her eyes became dull and sunken. Reticence was her. The change in her was dramatically depressing.
That day, she stopped talking completely and decided not to wake up. The doctors were reluctant to call it a coma. But after a battery of tests, they still couldn't explain why she was unresponsive. Little by little, I believe her soul left her breathing body. I don't think she felt any pain.
Such a coincidence that they placed her in the same ward, the exact same bed as my grandfather. I wonder if she knew that.
With my grandfather, I could feel him fighting; fighting so hard till he realized that this was one fight he couldn't win and it was time to rest. With my grandmother, all I saw was just an empty husk. I couldn't feel any awareness. She didn't have any lingering consciousness at all.
Without spiritual sustenance, her physical body soon stopped functioning.
And I know my grandparents are now joyfully reunited.
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.
~St. Francis of Assisi
