After the last blog about my Grandma's Legacy - Grandma's Stuff, and Grandpa Visits My Dream - something just clicked. Maybe it was just the catharsis of writing about it, but I sat in my desk chair for about thirty minutes after I wrote it, and I found that I was just...more at peace. I knew that I wasn't done grieving, but I felt like maybe I had at least turned the corner in my grief. But for the last two days, I have been pissed off to no end, and I've really had to think about why.

I know what you're thinking: "There's five stages to grief, and one of them is anger." True: the Kubler-Ross model is: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The model acknowledges that this is not a complete list of the emotions someone can feel in grief (or other traumatic, life-altering event) and that they could occur in any order, but most people usually exhibit at least these five. I kind of went through denial and acceptance at the same time, before my grandmother died. I couldn't bring myself to visit her very often, because she's the strongest woman I've ever known, and it hurt me to see her in this weakened state. It hurt that she didn't remember me when I was standing in front of her. In an emergency room visit one day, she asked me who I was seven times- every time I walked out of and back into the room.

"Who are you?"

"I'm ___, your grandson. I'm [my mom's] son."

"Oh. Glad to know you."

Seven times over the course of...an hour or less? It was heart rending.

So yeah, I had a hard time visiting my grandmother, and I only did it a few times once she stopped remembering me. That was my denial of what was happening. At the same time, I was accepting it. Accepting that as sure as I had lost her, in that she didn't remember me, I was going to lose her to this awful thing that had taken her memory, and would eventually take her life.

If I did any bargaining, it was brief, just before the end, when I was sitting at grandma's bedside. It wasn't for "one more day" though. I just wanted her to acknowledge me. I just wanted to hear her say she loved me. I just wanted some sign that she hadn't forgotten me completely. And I got it. When everything else was painful to the touch, bringing about a weak, "ow. ow. ow. ow. ow..." she held my hand. I held one of her hands in both of mine, very carefully, so that she didn't "ow. ow. ow.," and then she put her other hand on top of mine, just patting it a little, or maybe her hand was just shaking. She did that for awhile.

When she was even weaker, eyes not even open, about to fall asleep, we went to leave, and I told her, "I love you, grandma."

She didn't open her eyes. She just said, "I love you too, sweetheart." I got to hear that two more times before she died, and...I think ...I'm pretty sure... that was the last thing I ever heard her say. Not a bad memory.

Grief and depression are not the same thing, so I'm not sure if depression has played into it. Certainly grief. The anger though? The anger is over the way my aunt has been handling things, and that has a lot to do with Grandpa's gun and Grandma's sword. I think maybe the thing that's going to get me through it is Grandma's Bible...but at this point, that surely needs to be another blog.