I was planning to write a post just pointing out the new design of this site and some other casual shit like that. And then someone else died.

As I sit here, it’s after midnight on the morning of February 3, which is my grandmother’s 86th birthday. She died a few hours ago. Late last week I came in the house from some lame appointment I had, to find that she had fallen down the stairs to the basement. Actually, the first thing I saw was Darwin crying his eyes out in the living room. I knew something was up. Apparently she had gone downstairs to get something, and lost her balance on the way back up. She fell straight back and hit the deck pretty hard. Now, even by your average 85 year old person standards, this woman was in pretty bad shape. She can barely move around on flat ground, let alone stairs. She always uses a cane to prop her up, and sometimes a walker. She absolutely knew better than to even make an attempt at these stairs. ESPECIALLY while watching my son.

I walked in just shortly after it happened, and I called 911 right away. That was the last time I saw her. She was conscious, in some pain, but it surely didn’t appear to be critical condition. I made several calls to speak with a doctor or nurse about her condition, but as usual, the staff over at the ol’ Crozer-Chester Medical Center proved to be less than helpful. The only update I got was “She had some MRI’s and she’ll be fine”. A little over 24 hours later she was dead.

She and I couldn’t have been more different. Having said that, she was my primary care-giver/guardian from birth through my teen years. She was super old fashioned, relatively closed-minded, and extremely giving despite the fact that her decades as a factory worker left her on the wrong side of middle class. And now her pain is over.