The last day....

Emergency flights, red eyes to Dallas from Vegas, last minute phone calls, choked up voices, whispers in a hospital room, monitor noises that seem to send excruciating pain with every beep that is actually almost silent and the everlasting memory of this day imprinted to your memory. Today, yes this very day, is most likely her last day.

My grandmother is my step dad's mother. She has been a part of my life since I was 5. She lived with us for quite some time when I was younger and helped raise my younger brother. She is a fiesty Mexican woman that speaks excellent English, however as she is talking to you she throws in Spanish words to compensate for the words she isn't familiar with. She is a little over 4 feet and weighs about 70 pounds. She will spend all day in the kitchen cooking hot and spicy food and has home remedies for practically any illness that strikes at you. She follows the words of God and is up at the crack of daylight to pray. She takes several naps a day and schedules her days around soap oprahs. She will mumble at the TV in Spanish when someone cheats on their spouse and shakes her head and says a little prayer for them. This woman is my grandmother and today is her last day.

When it comes to death, I am not too sure how to handle it. Especially since she is the last grandparent I have left. I sit here mixed with emotions. It also brings me back to the conclusion that we always wait until the last minute to truly appreciate someone for who they are to us. I have found myself thinking that I always wait until it's too late. I never fully appreciate what I have until it's not there anymore and then I dwell on it for so long.

I wonder though, when it's your final day on this world, what do you think, what smells seem to take over your nose, what colors seem brighter, what sights make your eyes swell with tears of happiness, what emotions take you over the most? When you close your eyes, is it the family and friends that are standing around you that go through your final thoughts, is it of the loved ones that you yourself have previously lost, or is it of the loved ones in your previous years that aren't physically there to be with you?

I want to remember the good people in my life and the times that were spent with them. I just pray that my grandmother knows that I love her and that she herself has made an impact on this world and on me.