My paternal grandmother, the only grandparent I had left, died this morning all the way in southern California. She died at home, surrounded by family, at the ripe and beautiful age of 93.
She had been a pioneer midwife back in Viet-Nam, lying about her age to enter midwifery school at the age of 16. She married young and had 5 children of her own, all the while delivering babies left right and center in remote towns and villages near Hanoi. When she was two months pregnant with my father, her husband, an army doctor, died in some stupid squirmish between the VietCong and whatever army they fought with at the time. She was a strong willful woman who got involved in politics, becoming a capitalist deputee. When the war came, she quietly moved her children and all the extended family she could lay her hands on out of the country and narrowly avoided being decapitated herself, along with all the other capitalist deputee the communist got rid her. She fled to France, then Canada, finally to settle in Southern California, where she continued midwifery education and raising her family.
I didn't know my grandmother that well, but what I did that she had a LOT of personality. She told my mother she liked me best, out of all her grandchildren, because I was loud-mouthed and stubborn, just like her.
Also, like other women of her time, she was a survivor. She'd been through heart problems, breast cancer, double mastectomy, and later on, colon cancer.
She had been suffering from a generalized cancer for the past few months, and kept having stroke after stroke. Having heard the predictions of an astrologer she trusted, she believed she would die alone in a hospital, so she begged her eldest daughter to let her die at home. At great personal cost, my aunt agreed. The toll this has taken on my father's family has been great. They are all doctors and pharmacists, so they all knew things were coming to an end but that my grandmother could hang on for weeks. Last night, they were discussing whether or not to give her morphine to help her pass.
Finally, after many months of suffering, she is at peace.
I will miss her but I am thankful to HP that she isn't suffering any longer, and that my family can begin to grieve her. They've been in this horrible holding pattern for months, watching her die slowly.
Thanks for listening.