gifts from heaven

my Lola passed away at 05:40 on sunday morning, a few day shy of her 90th birthday. i can't remember if i wrote about it before, but she had suffered a stroke between Christmas and boxing day past, and hasn't been the same since. she was basically in palliative care for the first few days. they even brought in the priest to administer last rites. but she hung on. stubbornness isn't just on one side of my family.

last week, my mom said she took a turn for the worst. i don't know about you, but i don't know how much worse you can get if you're already hooked up to a catheter, feeding tube and morphine 24/7. and then she stabilized. a fighter.

i think she was tired of fighting, because she left us for greener pastures, higher plains, a better place, whatever you want to call it. she decided she was ready.

my mom phoned me at 6 a.m. i've never had a call at 6 a.m. before, so i basically knew that it was bad news. i wasn't surprised and i didn't feel sad. i was relieved that she wasn't suffering anymore. i got up and sat on the couch and started to watch the news. and then i started to cry.

you know how i feel about crying at the death of someone who has lived a full and complete life - i feel that we're crying for our loss, not theirs. it's not them we feel sorry for; it's us. for me, it was guilt. i haven't seen my Lola since before she was transferred to her care home in january. but the last time i saw her, she was cognizant and she told me she loved me. i think that's a pretty good memory to be left with.

that's why when my mom phoned an hour later and said that they were going to the home to say goodbye and did i want to come, i burst into tears and said, "i don't want to see her like that." she understood. almost everyone was there (and i say that lightly, because this is my dad's family we're talking about. there are a lot of them).

instead, i stayed home and decided to Skype my brother so he wouldn't find out about her death from a status update on Facebook. he asked me right away, "why are you up so early?" and i'm not one to mince words when it comes to this sort of thing so all i said was, "i have bad news. Lola Mama's gone." it was hard to see him cry, but i didn't want him to find out on the phone or through e-mail and then have to deal with it alone. at least being on Skype, you're face to face. we talked for about an hour. he's coming home on Saturday for the funeral on Tuesday.

i was sketchy yesterday evening when we went to my aunt's house for the first night of the Novena. my cousin, Ash, came up to gave me a hug and i lost it. i was weepy when i got home too. i knew this Lola's death would be the worst for me because she was the one i knew the best, the one that used to live with me and take care of me.

i wasn't sure i'd be able to go to work today. i felt so sad this morning but i managed to actually get out of the house on time so i thought i'd see how it went and if i couldn't hold it together throughout the day, i'd just go home.

standing on the skytrain, i felt sad. i looked sad. everything was glum. and then we got to Broadway station and the guy that i had smiled at...twice...just before the Olympics walked onto my car. and we made eye contact. and i kept trying to catch his eye and was successful at least twice. i thought hard about fishing out one of my business cards, scrawling the word "Coffee?" on it and handing it to him as i left the train. by the time we approached my station, i had my purse open and was looking for a pen.

and then i realized, as he smiled at me again and my gloom lifted almost entirely, that his appearance was a gift from my Lola. it was her telling me to stop being sad and to remember the living as much as the dead. his smile made me smile and it made me feel happy again.

okay, maybe it was just a coincidence that i saw him. but it certainly makes me feel better to think that my Lola is watching over me, trying to orchestrate something good from where she is.