A Day of Waiting...

Once in a while I'll have a day where I feel like I spend the whole day waiting and, before I know it, the day is over.

Yesterday I was on the "schedule" to babysit my nephew. I was also expecting a friend to drop by for a few minutes at 10am.

At 9am I received a phone call from my mom, who was subbing at a year-round school for the day. She called to tell me that my grandma had a massive stroke. She turned 90 in April and lost my grandpa--to whom she was married for 66 years--on March 13. She had a tiny stroke in January and had become quite diminished since the, but still had many lucid days. Mostly she wasn't able to drive anymore, her strong personality was gone, and she would get overwhelmed very easily.

What happened yesterday was nothing like that. She's been unresponsive since her home health care worker discovered something was wrong at 5am. Now she's in Intensive Care for at lease 2 weeks and will be in the hospital for 3-4 weeks.

The immediate family--aunts, uncles, cousins--exchanged phone calls and emails back and forth all day yesterday. I called El Paso and told my aunt, who is the oldest child of my grandmother's younger sister.

All we can do is wait.

While facing that news I ended up waiting an extra 3 hours for my brother to bring my nephew over because his napping schedule got a little off. That forced me to stew even more in the helplessness of the situation with my grandma.

We don't know if she'll come out of this or not. If she does, we don't know how much. I had planned to go and see her at the hospital, but by the time the baby was picked up, the day was essentially over. My mom visited for an hour or so and said that her eyes are closed, her body is limp, and that she doesn't look good. She did, however, squeeze my mom's hand when she announced who she was. We don't know if there is any paralysis or not. If there is, it seems to be concentrating on one hand, because she has moved her feet and left hand.

We're just waiting.

Ironically, I had made plans for this afternoon to go and visit my other grandma, who is also 90 (one who had a surprise party in June.) She doesn't drive anymore either because she broke her foot last year, but otherwise is in decent shape. Still, as time marches on and you see your loved ones become more fragile at this age, it makes you want to savor every moment.