Bailey (left) and Netta.

Bubbe took her last breath with my sister and me at her side this past Saturday evening before seven o’clock. We told the kids the next morning. Lewis wanted to know if she could still talk a little bit even though she died. Art recognized that Lewis doesn’t know “anything about died” and so he asks lots of questions. After visiting potential site for a remembrance service and then stopping at Bubbe’s to pick something up Art said, “Maybe we can go to Bubbe’s house to think about her,” as opposed to a cemetery or somewhere like that. I’m sure he can’t fathom that anyone else would ever live in her little house.

As my brother-in-law, Michael, so aptly said we are experiencing a mixture of sorrow and relief but over time the relief will fade and the sorrow will take over. Those will be hard days. Right now I am enjoying a phase of disbelief and denial that belies my true heartache. Nothing else really needs to be said.

I love how Lewis’ mouth is always open when he’s climbing or working hard. Here he is climbing at the park.

While my sister and I tried to be with my mother for the last weeks of her life my mother-in-law gave me the greatest gift a person could have given: time. She stayed in our house and grabbed the girls at 6:15am every morning so Ben and I could sleep in. She cleaned and did laundry so I didn’t have to scramble when I was home. She got the girls “on a schedule” so they were rested and agreeable. She watched all four children on her own twice so Ben and I could go out at night. She took care of herself with daily outings to coffee shops and the YMCA so she felt recharged for MORE childcare at the house. She tolerated my mother’s needy cat downstairs in her space so I could easily box him up for visits to the hospice home. She also changed his stinky litter and fed him his stinky food.

Perhaps her biggest gift was that she gave me flexibility. Nan is a woman who likes to have a plan and she allowed me the ability to flake out day after day with no agenda other than to get to the hospice to be with my mom for some length of time. I’m sure that drove her BATTY and for that hardship I am really sorry. But she just went along with my flakiness without complaining. She made it possible for me to focus on my family and my mom in the only way I could at that stressful time. And that is why your time here was the greatest gift, Nan. So again, thank you, thank you, thank you.