You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

-Eleanor Roosevelt

The period in my life between the ages of 14-21 is what my mother and I like to refer to as ‘the seven year shit storm.‘ Tragedy and loss had become routine, if not expected, for our family in these years. It became familiar and ‘normal’… we sometimes had a harder time functioning when things seemed to be going alright.

Today is the eight year anniversary of one of the biggest losses we experienced – the all-too-soon and sudden passing of my grandmother, Linda Rinaldi Ross (Nonnie). Not only her death, but the way in which she passed, profoundly altered my life and my path in ways that I can only see in retrospectively piecing it all together now.

The first time she was hospitalized, before it was anything serious – I had gone by myself to see her. I was 18 and she was my best friend. I told her things that I wasn’t brave enough to tell anyone else. She never judged – instead, she always responded with such love and comfort. I had gone there that day, seeking this acceptance and guidance. We talked for a long time, I listened to her tell me about life when she was my age. She was 59 years old and admitting to me how she lived most of her life in regret – wishing for the what if’s that she had dreamed of when she was young. 59 and just learning how to let go, how to forgive herself and others… to see the poison of living in regret.

This conversation and the events there after… of truly understanding how short life is, how fleeting and precious each moment is… Well, I am who I am because of it all. I am the person, friend, daughter, granddaughter I am because of that ‘seven year shit storm’.

I look back at what I have survived, what I have overcome… and it gives me such confidence to know that I will be okay, that I can make it through anything… I have no fear, only hope. This courage is what compels me to move forward each day, moving toward this goal of traveling and adventure. I’m grateful to know, understand and implement these life lessons at 26.

I want to share the story of the night my grandmother passed away. I wrote it six years ago, every detail is still vivid in my mind. I do my best to make her proud – to honor her memory by thinking of her in all that I do and living the lessons that her life and death taught me. I know she has finally found the peace she always sought after.

My Grandmother’s Hands

            I stumbled up the front steps and lazily slammed my body into the door. It was locked. I slurred a few swears and stumbled to the other side of the house. After three unsuccessful attempts, I had finally entered the correct four numbers in the corresponding order that was necessary to raise the garage door and gain me access into the house through the basement. I didn’t bother turning the light on in the basement; I knew the path to my bedroom door by heart and through repetition and even if something foreign crossed my path, I was too drunk to fully comprehend the pain anyway.

I shut the door behind me quietly as to not wake anyone in the house. This was routine now. I was eighteen, I was going to do what I wanted regardless of anyone else’s concerns. I had been through a lot including the death of my father and the ending of an unhealthy, mentally abusive relationship. I was depressed and self medicating with vodka, occasionally being soothed by some Southern Comforting. I threw my bag to the floor, kicked off my shoes and debated changing into pajamas or just passing out in my clothes.

In the midst of this dilemma, the phone began to ring. I quickly adjusted my eyes, searching for some sort of time telling device. My heart was stricken with concern as my family had become accustomed to late night calls; plagued with what psychiatrists deemed “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.” It was 2:23am; there was just cause for concern. My grandmother, Nonnie, was in the hospital, had been on and off for a few weeks; digestive issues. I listened in on the extension while my mother and Nonnie talked. She was worried that she had to go in for surgery. Her doctor got on the phone and asked my mother to come down to the hospital. I sobered very quickly. When the conversation ended, I ran up the stairs. I guess it had been a good decision to stay dressed.

I convinced my mother to let me go with her, this was after all my Nonnie; the woman who helped to raise me and as a child, had grazed my cheeks with her warm, soft hands as I fell asleep. If something was wrong, I was damn sure to be right by her side. From my cell phone, I called my Uncle Dan and Auntie Florence several times for them to meet us at the hospital, but to no avail.

We entered the building, an eerie silence enveloping us as we made our way to the fourth floor. The doctor greeted us promptly as the elevator doors opened. The nurses either stared back at us with a great, intense sadness in their eyes or turned their backs toward us completely, ashamed of the news that was to come.

Everyone knew my Nonnie because she made it a point to know everyone. She cared for her family, her friends, her neighbors and all those she had encountered, even those she had never and would never meet, with a unique compassion, a deep empathy. She had made her life up of a fabric woven of all the people that she loved. She lived vicariously and considerately.

In a low voice, the doctor explained that she would not need surgery because there was nothing more they could do for her. She would not survive this; she had less than two days to live. For a moment, I stared in disbelief waiting for a funny show host to pop up and in wholehearted melody start singing, “You’re on candid camera!” But there were no cameras to be found, I dropped to the floor and began sobbing from the inner depths of my body. My mother composed herself and held me. A nurse came over and took my mother’s place so that she could go into my grandmother’s room until I too composed myself.

We had to tell her. How do you tell someone you love that they have less than two days to live? Do they want to know? Would you want to know? That night, we refrained. We sat with her for awhile acting as if it was okay, as if everything would be okay and all the while dying on the inside knowing it wouldn’t be.

We left shortly after; the digital clock in my mother’s Jetta read 4:49am. We headed home; to shower, to pack a bag of necessities not knowing how long we’d be there, to try and seek some answer as to why. In the shower, I again found myself stricken and overcome with this intense pain, my tears mixing with the water and swirling down the drain. We were now also responsible for telling the rest of the family. We collected what we needed, including ourselves and headed to my Aunt and Uncle’s. The digital clock in the Jetta now reading 7:14am.

They knew something was wrong immediately and we didn’t take time for pleasantries. The four of us now headed back to the hospital. We each took our own time to be with her. During mine, I crawled in bed with her as I had done as a small child. With my head against her chest I listened to her heart beating as she softly stroked my face, her hands warm and though not as soft as they once had been, still comforting. She warned me to lead my own life, to not live in regret as she had done for so long. She was proud of me, always would be no matter what. She told me how precious I was to her, how much she loved me. Our time was all too brief. My Uncle Steve arrived shortly after and once the five of us were standing around my Nonnie, she exchanged her last few words with us, not knowing that they would be so. The nurse came in to pump her IV with some medication to ease her and allow her to sleep, as she had not done so in some time. We didn’t know it would be our last time with her, we weren’t aware the medicine would keep her sleeping until she entered an eternal slumber. It was a blessing though, we didn’t have to tell her; but we believe that she knew and that she made her peace. The time on the cold, sterile clock hanging so blandly on the wall read 5:49pm. So we sat and we waited; waiting for her to wake up or waiting for her to die, just waiting.

One of the nurses came in explaining that they were going to order food and we were more than welcome to add on to their order. The only thing keeping us “alive” all day had been the several Boxes o’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts that visitors brought. We decided on pizza. When it came, there was no place in the small room to place the pizza so my mother gently placed it at the bottom of my Nonnie’s bed. My family is known for our humor even during the darkest points in our lives, so I made a wisecrack about how nice it was of my mother to place a pizza at the feet of my dying grandmother; we laughed, maybe awkwardly, but regardless we laughed for the first time that day. And in that moment, we found the strength and comfort we needed to make it through this.

Hours passed. A silent calm came over all of us, different then the eerie silence that surrounded us all day. We all turned toward my Nonnie then gathered around the bed. No one said a word; we didn’t have to because just as she had known, we now did too. I held that delicate hand of hers. She took a breath and it was done. We each took our final private moments with her. And just as I had done with my last moment of her in life, I gently laid my head on her chest and held her hand to my face; it was now cold and rough but still comforting simply because it belonged to her. That clock now read 4:47am, it would be the last instance that I cared about the time for awhile.

I sat on the curb of the hospital’s parking lot. The sun was beginning to rise and I remember being mad at the sun that morning because it began a day that my Nonnie wouldn’t be alive to see.

Two years have passed and that moment has left the five of us forever changed and eternally bonded. We were blessed to have those last moments with her; to share in the last moments of this incredible woman and to be able to be there together.

From time to time I feel her soft, warm hands gracefully grazing my cheek, sometimes it’s when I’m sleeping and others when I am in despair. But I remember the way they felt in life and not in death; just the same way that I want to remember and honor her in life and not in that last breath.