Everyday Randomness

Leaving An Important Message

Death has been hitting a lot of people over the last week, not just us, and it’s a sad time.  We’re still trying to find our own ways to deal with Grandma’s death, and then we find out another close family friend, George, passed away last week.

None of us were told about the death until days after his funeral, so none of us even knew to attend his funeral.  His granddaughter said she told us about it, but none of us heard from her.

My sister-in-law sent me a message tonight saying she’s really upset, and I don’t blame her.  She found out the granddaughter did contact her about it, but in a very unorthodox way.  My sister in law uses Yahoo Messenger maybe once every few months when someone asks her if she can talk to them there.  She didn’t even realize the granddaughter was on her friend’s list, but tonight she logged in for the first time in a month and had an offline message from the granddaughter telling her that the Grandpa had passed away and funeral services were that next day.

To me that’s not the way you pass on the information.  You don’t leave a message with one person on a chat program and expect our entire family to find out about it.  You pick up the phone, you call someone, and you make sure the message gets through.

A Little Bit Of Good News

In all the sadness I forgot to mention something that I think is a good note. I mentioned earlier I’ve been worried about my own Grandma as well because the doctor said her blood pressure was extremely high.

Well this morning I walked up there to help her do her test. She’d just eaten although I asked her not to eat until after I gave the test, so I had to wait 30 minutes before I could get the “official” reading because eating can raise your blood pressure. I was getting bored so for curiosity sake I decided to test her anyway 15 minutes after she ate. She was talking up a storm telling me about the doctor, and she had just drank a cup of coffee…she drinks the 50% less caffeine type.

Her reading was 142/68. That’s still high, but that’s majorly lower than what she tested at the doc’s office…212/101. She’s only been on her hypertension meds for 1 days, so I don’t know if they’ve had time to effect it that much.

We waited another 30 minutes, then I had her sit in a straight back chair with her back against the chair for 5 minutes, and I didn’t let her talk. After the 5 minutes her blood pressure was 129/62. I don’t know if it’s the medication, but it made us both feel a lot better to see her numbers so low.

I asked her to tell me exactly what she did the evening she had to go to the ER. First of all there was the extreme pain from her knee that I’ve already mentioned as well as how stressed out she gets when she has to go to the doctor. She’ll stress herself into a panic attack. On top of that she told me she drank a canned Pepsi at home, then she went to dinner where she had 2 glasses of tea. Normally the only caffeine she drinks is the 1 cup of 1/2 caffeinated coffee each morning. Of course I’m by no means a doctor, but I’m smart enough to know stress, pain, and caffeine can cause an inflation in blood pressure.

I gave her all the information on the DASH diet and helped her write out a grocery list. She’s going to start using only fresh veggies from her garden or frozen veggies. She still has the option of canned veggies without salt, but she wants to avoid accidentally picking up the wrong thing. She really wants to take this change of diet thing seriously even though the doctor didn’t order it. It’s still something that will help greatly, and Hubby and I are thinking about trying it ourselves.

I’m interested to see how the rest of her readings go this week, and I can’t wait until she goes back to the doctor next week. I want to see if her blood pressure is extremely elevated again being at the doctor’s office.

Now I’m off to work on my resume. I’ve been doing some data entry work for a company in Atlanta, and I thought about how different I bet most Atlanta resumes look from my own. There are so many professionals in the city. If I want to pick up any new telecommute clients from the big city I better really make sure my own resume sparkles.

My Final Goodbye

Yes it has been a sad day for our family, but we’re all coping with it pretty well. Knowing something like this is coming in advance has really helped us all prepare ourselves to deal with it. I think most of us started shedding our tears a few weeks ago, so now it’s easier to deal with the things that have to be done.

The family lives all over the country, so the three sisters decided there won’t be a traditional funeral for Grandma. Hubby’s Grandpa is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and Grandma chose cremation. Because of this we’ve decided to have a small family gathering here to celebrate her life…immediate family that lives here only. Then on Mother’s Day the entire family is going to meet at Arlington where we can spread some of her ashes on Hubby’s Grandpa’s grave. We’ll have an official ceremony then.

The sisters originally wanted to do it on her birthday, but that’s September 24, and it will be hard for some of the family to attend. A lot of us just don’t have the money to make the trip that soon. Hubby and I will be out of town on our anniversary trip, but I’d be more than willing to cancel that. Unfortunately I wouldn’t get a refund, so we still wouldn’t have the cash to make the trip to Arlington. A few other family members also need more time to save up the cash they’ll need to travel.

I understand why most families hold traditional ceremonies according to their religious beliefs or culture, but Grandma never wanted anything like that. I think she wanted to slip quietly out of this world, and the way things are being handled are the way she would want it.

My favorite photo of all time is the picture of Hubby and I with all of our Grandmothers. We lost Hubby’s paternal Grandmother last year, and now his maternal Grandmother. This photo hangs on the wall in my office over my desk, so no matter what I will always know they’re with us.

Grandma you will be greatly missed. We love you.

She Passed

I got the message from my sister-in-law at 7:09 am.

mom just woke me up. ppl from hospice called. gma just passed on

I knew it was going to happen this morning. 15 minutes earlier I was sending Hubby out the door to work and telling him I’d let him know as soon as I heard something. I had a feeling deep in the pit of my stomach that we’d be getting that call any minute. He had just enough time to get out of cell phone range before I got the call. It’ll be another hour before I can tell him, and I’m sure he’ll want to come home.