12-6-2009 - Details about my grandmother

My mood while writing this blog: Sad / lonely / hurt

My Grandmother, Geraldine, was a great wife, mother, grandmother, and soon to be great grandmother. Growing up, my granny was like another mom to me. My mom was very young when she had me and we stayed with my granny and pawpaw until I was 6. When I was 4, my pawpaw was diagnosed with leukemia after a benzene pipe blew up in his face at the chemical plant he was working at. When I was 8, he died. My granny and pawpaw were my entire life. That was the day my family fell apart.

My granny moved to Georgia to be with her mom and sisters because she couldn't bear to live in the house that she and my pawpaw lived in.

A few years after moving to GA, she met him. For years, my grandmother suffered mental and physical abuse from her boyfriend. She would call my mom crying on countless occasions stating that she had no food and no money and that he had left her and been gone for days or weeks doing drugs and had taken all of her money to do this. My mom would send her whatever money she could, even if it was her last $20 so she could get food. Many days would go by with my grandmother just having bread and eggs to eat. I remember my mom even told me that my granny called her one day and told her all she had to eat one week was a box of oatmeal creme pies and that she would have one a day and that would be all because he would take all of her money and she couldn't buy food. My mom would call me crying because she wasn't able to help her. So my mom would go pawn something that she owned so she could get money to my grandmother for food. This went on for years and I felt so bad because I wasn't able to help either of them. Many of the times he would come back, he would beat my granny so bad.

Sometime during the night last night, it happened again. He came home drunk and they were fighting. My granny got upset and walked outside. She started walking towards the road to get away from him like she always does. Her neighbor/friend heard her crying and screaming and tried to call her name but my granny just kept walking. She never looked up. She never took her eyes off the ground. She attempted to walk to the other side of the road so she could take a walk. She never made it to the other side of the road. As soon as she stepped on to the road, she was hit by a car. She never saw it coming. When the paramedics got there, she was breathing slightly and still had heartbeat. She never regained conciousness. The hospital doctors kept trying to bring her back everytime her heart would stop. They weren't succesful.

My aunt (her sister) got to the hospital to identify her. She uncovered her and unwrapped her head. She held her still warm hand and talked to her. She died just minutes before my aunt got there because the nerves in her hand were still firing. They kept twitching.

When the cops went back to the house to talk to him, he told them that she was in the other room sleeping. He claimed he didn't even know she left the house. After he left the hospital, the bastard went back home and went to bed like nothing ever happened.

At around 12 am, my grandmother was hit by a car. At around 2 am she died. She was only 70 years old. She suffered severe head trauma, 2 crushed legs, 1 crushed elbow, and the left side of her face is pretty much gone.

At around 2 am this morning, I woke up with the most severe stomach pain I have ever felt in my life. The right side of my stomach was in so much pain that I thought I was dying. I thought something was wrong with my baby. I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and had a horrible feeling that something was wrong. Little did I know, it was my grandmother dying. My granny, my mom, me, and my little sister all have this connection. Whenever something extremely bad happens to one of us, the others know because we get the "leftover" symptoms I guess you could say. So I wonder if the pain that I felt was a sample of the pain my grandmother was going through? The same thing happend to my mom. She woke up with a stomach ache and felt like something was wrong. We didn't find out for another 2 hours that something happened.

Now we got the news today that my granny's sisters decided to have her cremated which is NOT what my granny wanted. She wanted to be buried next to her son, my uncle. My mom is so upset about this because my granny is terrified of fire. They are going to put a dress on her tomorrow, put her on a viewing table and let us see her tomorrow and Sunday, and then they are going to cremate her. At first they weren't going to let us see her because her face being so damaged but they said they will try to repair it as much as they can so we can see her.

I feel so guilty because I haven't talked to her since before Christmas. I haven't seen her in 3 years and I live 3 hours away. I had a hard time talking to her because every time we would talk, she would start talking about my pawpaw and how I was his baby and how I meant everything to him. How she would remember me running through the door yelling his name and how he would smile. How when he was in the hospital dying when I was 8 and he couldn't move or talk but he sat straight up in his bed and told me he loved me, told my mom to make sure she takes care of me, and then layed back down and died infront of me. I loved her so much but I got so sad when I woudl talk to her because she would immediately start crying. NOw I can't talk to her anymore. NOw I can't see her anymore. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell her I loved her. I never got to talk to her about the baby, which I was told that she couldn't have been more thrilled that she was going to be a great grandma. I was told that she couldn't wait to see my little girl and that she was going to be the best great grandma ever.

Now all I have is my favorite picture of the two people that were my whole world and now they are both gone.