The Circle of Life

So my last post had to do with a funeral, and this one is no better. Kind of sad I come out of a hiatus on here to post about another death in my family, but while the last was the Queen's great-great aunt from Arkansas, this one was my maternal grandmother, who was also my last grandparent. The last death in my family occurred in 1993, so it's been quite a while, and this one obviously hit me a little harder. Right now, I'm basically disacknowledging it, but the Queen has noted that I look very tired lately and my back felt very tight. I may be keeping a lot in.

Strictly speaking, I don't show a lot of emotion. It's not necessarily a matter of choice. I just don't emote very much. I had an initial cry when I learned she died, and again when I told the princesses. The Queen had to finish telling them because I couldn't.

In her life, my grandmother had seven children, which leaves behind a legacy even now as most of the children had at least 2 children, and easily half of those had given her at least 2 grandchildren. I say at least because (for instance) my mother had three children, but of the three of us, I'm the only one with children, but I have three. My mother's older brother had two, and each of them have had two as well. The estimation is probably close given how variable life really is. Bottom line is that her service will be crowded.

For my part, thinking about her, I only knew tidbits of her life. The most prominent trait I remember is her attitude. She was very insistent on making sure things got done and mostly done her way. If she had an opinion, you knew it. Unfailingly. This created a little tension, as you can imagine, between her and several people, but as she got older, she mellowed considerably. She suffered the majority of her adult life from rheumatoid arthritis, but it never slowed her down. She had some special gadgets to help her do life on her own since her husband (my grandfather) died back in 1978. Hence, she spent her senior years without her partner, and yet, she was never really alone. Not with her considerable family around.

We saw her a couple times a year usually because she lived in Edmond, which is outside Oklahoma City in a house that could best be described as being reminiscent of a really, really long trailer home. Now, this was a permanent structure, but it amounted to a long hallway with rooms down on side of it. I believe there were four rooms in the main house, but when you crossed an area referred to as the "breezeway" (because it wasn't always walled in), there were two more rooms over the garage. The house was built from a reptile house that (I think) originated from the Oklahoma City Zoo back in the 60's. It was moved out there, given a foundation, built onto, and made a home for a growing family (I can't remember whether mom said her youngest twin sisters were born at the time).

She came around a few times since the Queen and I were married, including Ladybug's first birthday. The only times I'd seen her over the past few years were family reunions, but we could see her health deteriorating as she allowed herself to be taken about in a wheelchair. A part of my vacation was devoted to going to the assisted living center where she spent the last days of her life so the girls could see the woman they had in their prayers every night since I started praying nightly with them. While her body was frail, her mind was no less than it ever was. She still asked for things with the same authority of a woman who firmly raised seven children. She struggled with nothing when we were there.

Last Thursday, we heard that she had wheeled into her room and backed her wheelchair up to the desk in her room. She planned to walk across her room to her bed and lie down, but the next thing she said she remembered was waking up on the floor. She was rushed to the hospital where they found she had a broken femur, a bump on her head and a bruise on the brain. The doctor believed that her bones had grown so brittle, that as light as she'd become, her leg had broken under her own weight. They wanted to do surgery to set the leg so it could heal, but her heart was too erratic to do anything. She was going to stay in the hospital until she was stable enough to take care of the leg.

That evening, her doctor had a conversation with her and told her that she would be unable to return to the assisted living center because she no longer had the strength to take care of herself. "I know," she told him.

On Friday morning, at around 5am, her heart stopped. But she wasn't done yet because it started back up. She was advised at that time that in order to control her heart rate, they would need to put in a pacemaker. Firm and stubborn to the end, she told the doctor that she only wanted the pacemaker that God gave her, and wasn't interested in another one.

One of my cousins had recently given birth to her second child, and realizing the gravity of grandma going into the hospital the previous night, she prepared to go to Oklahoma City that morning so that her daughter could at least meet her grandmother for just a second. She stated on Facebook that she had just gotten out of Claremore (Northwest of Tulsa) when she got the call. She was too late.

Just before 9am, my grandmother's heart stopped again.

Carmelita Ruth (Shane) McCoy: October 8, 1929 - November 6, 2009

The dash between her dates was filled with life, love, and family. The church will be crowded.