Lifting Me Up- A Blog By Cassie

Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.

Psalm 62:5

I was thinking a lot yesterday about my grandma who we lost on December 1st, 2014. I had spent a lot of time with her at the end of her life, I’d say just about every single day during her last month with us. It was strange that she was on my mind so much yesterday because this morning I had a Facebook memory pop up of my son eating a fudge sickle one year ago today. That was it. One year ago today, we were back at my parent’s house helping them paint. For me though, I was there to spend some quality time with my grandma. She had been doing her chemo treatments, and despite them making her very sick, this was the last time that I saw her be so mobile. My grandma was a hairdresser by trade, and her fingernails and hair were always important to her. When I got to town her hair was very long in the front, but falling out so quickly. Every comb through pulled more and more of it out. She really wanted to get out of the house and be around family while my parents were getting the house painted. So, after a stop up at Great Clips (where she and Logy got new do’s) we drove out to my parents. I remember water being a big problem for her at this time. She needed to drink a lot of water, but she just never did. She probably just physically did not want to. I could tell she felt like crap. My mom had tried a couple different types of cups for her, but nothing seemed to make her drink more. On the drive out, it was a good talk, but I could tell that she was just tired. Not fully there with me, but I know that she wanted to be. Was she just too sick, or was she depressed knowing what her circumstances were? We sat in the lawn chairs watching all of the guys work on painting the house. When I told her that I would make her a little bed on the couch if she wanted to take a nap I was surprised she jumped at the idea. This was not my grandma. She never slept during time with her family, she cherished every moment of her time. She slept on the couch for a good couple of hours, and when she woke up she was ready to go home. She told me she had never been so sick in her life. I asked her if it was like having the horrible flu and she responded by saying, “yes, but worse and never going away.”

No wonder she has been on my mind so much the last couple of days. These days were some of her last good ones because the end of August beginning into September is when she really began to go downhill fast. Was it the chemo or the cancer? It felt like a race to see which one would kill her faster. I knew in my heart from the day of her pancreatic cancer diagnosis back in June, that she was going to die. I think she knew it too.

I can remember her hands, and exactly how they looked, her grandmothers ring always on her finger, and her perfectly filed finger nails. I remember her smell and the way her house smelled. It was a clean crisp smell. Very unique. When I left my grandma for the last time the day before she passed away, I took her quilt in the car with me and cried the entire way back to my brothers smelling her smell on the quilt wishing it would never go away. Nothing I have smells like my grandma anymore. But, I can remember it in my mind. As I write all of this, I imagine this is how Brynn and Cody feel. These memories of my grandma that I cherish, like an image of a hand or a smell, they have to feel that too for Rowyn. The grief I carry for both of these significant events in my life are so different. But to me, they are also so connected. How can so much happen in such a short amount of time. They say the bad things come in threes… we had Aarons accident, ours, and then losing my Grandma. I do not know how it all works, but I do know that no matter how bad it all feels sometimes, this was all part of Gods plan. And whether it’s hands with wrinkles and rheumatoid arthritis that I remember, or small new chubby baby hands that they remember, I think that some days those hands up in Heaven are holding us up down here.