Goodnight, Nana Upstairs and Downstairs...

On October 9, 2009, my dear Nana went home to be with Jesus, her husband and her parents. She had been sick for the past eight weeks. On August 22, I took her out to get her nails done and we had lunch. That Monday morning she became unresponsive for about three days, then a week later we had a scary episode with her blood pressure during which she was EERILY lucid. Over the next six weeks she had good days and bad days. She pretty much was bed ridden. Only on one occasion, Labor Day weekend, did she not know me. Lindsey came to visit her the weekend before she passed. Piper had gotten to visit several times. She had been in a wonderful home, the kind of place I dreamed for her in the beginning, a place of love, light and kindness since April. They let me bring Piper to visit, they fixed her hair everyday and put lotion on every inch of her skin so that she was always so soft... They were with her when she passed peacefully in her sleep.

The day she passed I had come to visit. I read her Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs. She used to read it to me when I was little. The folks at the home feel that the book gave her permission to go home and she finally, gracefully exited into the next plane of existence.

My life feels surreal with out her. She was my anchor, she needed me and she was "my person." Yet I cannot just let go and cry. The reckoning is coming I am sure. Grief is a real and palpable companion in her place. Even while no longer living with me, she was always there, a presence in the back of my mind and now that space is painfully vacant...

Nana was, in my opinion, one of the sweetest, funniest, most of the wall ladies I ever knew. She had a full, amazing and love filled life.

I will miss her until the day I die and I see her again.

And I thank God for the gift that she was for the time that we had her.

Goodnight, Nana Upstairs and Downstairs.