well, this is a crappy end to my year

So there's alot going on right now, and I've decided that maybe getting back to this will be therapuetic. (did I spell that right? too tired to check)

I also have a lot to be thankful for. My boys are great, they are healthy and happy and sleeping through the night. We have thankfully been spared much damage in this crashing economy, and I can provide for my children and give to those less fortunate and we're going to buy a house. My husband is fine, although annoying the shit out of me today.

But my uncle, my mom's eldest brother and my Godfather, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I have not yet wrapped my mind around this, am willfully remaining swaddled in denial, although I speak to him about it freely. He didn't tell my grandmother, because she is 92 and failing and he didn't want her to know if she didn't have to. And now my grandmother, my beloved and cranky old Nana, is shutting down.

This I have wrapped my mind around. I am sad, and I'm not yet giving in to the sadness, although tomorrow when I go there I'm sure to lose my shit. It's so rare these days, and a blessing, for me to know anyone who dies of old age. Who just wears out. No disease, no grueling treatments. My grandfather, her husband, died similarly, and once hospice told us it was imminent we began a bedside vigil, without ever speaking about it. The gift they gave us, my grandparents, the appreciation of family, the unspoken rule that you circle the wagons when things are bad. And it will be grueling, and emotionally draining, and it will also be beautiful and warm and closed and just as it should be, instead of in a hospital, surrounded by industrial smells and strangers and the lights that never really go off. I am not ready, I am not prepared to explain to my son what happened to Nan, his Nan that he proudly helps walk with her cane, clutching her hand in his own. I am not ready to tell her I love her for the last time, and that she's given us the greatest gift, and that she'll live on in all of us.

Hospice told us once she gets into bed she'll never get out. A couple of days, a week at most. So I guess it doesn't matter if I'm ready or not.