I recently lost my grandmother and had to experience what it was like to say goodbye to someone when it was too late to hear those words back. My grandma suffered from dementia and other mind altering illnesses that made it so she no longer knew who I was. As I sat next to her in the hospital giving her food and water, I knew it was nearing her last day. To her I was just another nurse or caregiver and not anyone substantial. The time that we spent together that meant so much to me, she wouldn't remember in the same significance that I did. Acknowledging this was difficult. I desperately wanted my "goodbyes" and "I love you's" to mean the same thing to her that they did to me. I wanted them to be substantial in her mind like they were in mine. Unfortunately this is how I felt about most of our encounters in the last few years of her life. If you have a loved one who suffers from an illness that deteriorates their brain before their body, you know how hard it is to cope and witness a person who no longer remembers who you are.
For the last few years, my grandmother was in and out. Occasionally she would realize who I was and we would have meaningful conversations, but within a few minutes those conversations were forgotten. I felt the pangs of guilt from becoming tired of this and no longer wanting to visit her. In so many ways I wanted to preserve her the way she had been all her life in my mind. She was still my grandmother with her cute white head of hair, but the amazing woman I remembered seemed to be disappearing. Now that she is gone, I hang on to the times and memories I had with her.
My heart goes out to everyone who has experienced or is experiencing losing a person before they are truly gone. The pain of loss is unmatchable to any other pain in this life; but feeling like you didn't get a goodbye or final positive memory with that person is another blow to the heart entirely. The thoughts and questions that swirled my mind could never be answered. I would never know if she knew how much I loved and cared for her. I would never know if she knew I was there during her last days and that I looked up to her now more than ever. I hated that she probably wasn't aware I had recently gotten married or that my husband was in the Navy like her husband had been. All these things I shared with her that likely had not stuck. I hated that she had to suffer through these diseases and that she had to battle laying on her deathbed, not realizing that she had family and friends there who love her. I so desperately wish I could have saved her from her own mind and wish that I could have taken her pain away.
Love the people in your life hard and well before it's too late.
