Earlier this week, I got word from dad that mom’s mother had suffered a massive heart attack and was in her nursing home’s hospital, likely with only a few days left to live. Mom flew down to Florida immediately, and was able to visit with her mom and cousins (who had also flown in) while Grandma was awake.

A second, more mild heart attack followed soon afterwards, and today at just a little after 4pm Seattle time, Grandma died.

It’s been almost exactly a month since Grandpa died, so any prayers, kind wishes, or whatever fits into your life for my mom would be appreciated. Dad’s flying down to Florida tonight to help mom out with all the final details, and the memorial service will be on Monday.

As I mentioned when Grandpa died, the distances between Alaska and Florida kept me from knowing mom’s parents as well as I might have otherwise, though we did travel to visit them as often as possible, and they came up to Alaska quite a few times before the trip became too much of a bother. Grandpa loved to travel, so they’d often drive their Winnebago up the Al-Can highway rather than fly up, and their summer visits to Alaska often included a fair amount of family sightseeing around Alaska, all of us piled into the camper and driving around. Invariably, at least once on every trip, someone would leave a loaf of bread on one of the bench seats, or it would fall off the table, and Grandma would end up sitting on it. No trip was complete until Grandma had sat on the bread.

Grandma’s sight started failing many years ago. She functioned as well as she could for a long time, but eventually got to the point where far more magnification than glasses or a magnifying glass was able to produce. She ended up getting a machine similar to an overhead projector that projected whatever she put onto the workspace onto a screen, allowing her to read and write letters. Since she couldn’t read the menus of the restaurants that she and Grandpa liked to go to, she would often borrow a menu, take it home, and use her reader to peruse the menu at her leisure so that she’d know what she wanted next time they went out to eat. We soon found out on her trips that her studies were hardly limited to what she was interested in, though, as once we were all gathered around the table at a restaurant, she’d stand at her spot and recite nearly the entire menu to us from memory.

She was a wonderful, strong-willed woman, and will definitely be missed.

Bye, Grandma.

[See also: Goodbye, Grandpa | 3-Way Capitalism? | Christmas in Alaska | First Charley, now Frances | Grandma’s Memorial ]

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