My grandma's a wonderful woman. When I was a kid, she used to take me on these long walks either around the neighbourhood or to the playground.
She never liked cooking, but did it anyway. She loved feeding people she considered family.
Whenever I told her I had some exams coming, she always told me not to stress about them. "Just pass them. You don't have to have an A to pass. It's okay. Pass them and forget about them."
She passed down her famous honey cake recipe to me. I remember noting it down, all while she told me she never used actual measurements. "Just use feeling", she said.
She always made sure to make my favourite mashed potatoes with spring onions in them. Every time I stayed with my grandparents, she would make them for me. I ate them for lunch, while they were still hot, and then cold, instead of popcorn, when we were watching some dumb movies together.
For the past two years, she's been overfeeding my boyfriend every chance she got. I think it was her way of showing how much she liked him and that she considers him a part of this family.
My grandma's in the hospital.
Recently, my grandparents had some weird virus, which made them sick for like a whole month. They were both feeling and looking awful, so we had to take care of them.
Right after we thought they weren't ill anymore, my grandma came up with a cancer recurrence. She hadn't had any in many years, at least I don't remember her having any in the past 20-something years. And now she had it.
At first, the doctors told us it was in her brain. At her age? Really shitty news. My mom and my aunt had to admit her into the hospital, take care of everything, all while trying not to fall apart. My grandpa's still paralyzed, he has no idea what to do, and at the moment, he's more like a shell of a man than the weird grandpa I remember from my childhood.
I decided to drive down to my hometown to see my grandma before her surgery. I talked to her on the phone before, and she was slurring her words and having jumbled thoughts then, but when I talked to her in person, she seemed to be even worse. My grandma was always rather energetic, talking a lot, moving a lot. Now she was doing the same, but I saw how terrible she was feeling.
But what got me the most, I think, was how incoherent what she was talking about was. All her thoughts cut short, all sentences mixed up and jumbled. I got scared because I saw how scared she was.
She was telling us how, during the past few days, she had three separate dreams where some unknown man hugged her and told her it was going to be okay. I saw my mom trying to keep it together.
I was assuring my grandma, a very religious, Catholic woman, that she had no need to worry. She was scared, I could see that. I told her it was her Guardian Angel, a sign from God. I'm not a religious person; if there's something I believe in, it's clear signs from the universe. Whatever you wanna call it, I don't care. But I want to believe that her dreams had at least some truth in them.
Then my grandma got up and started looking for something, because of course she can't sit down for longer than five minutes. Turns out she was looking for one of her gold chains- Polish grandmas typically put their crosses on them, and the additional chains are just so it can be customizable, I guess. She then sat my mom down and told her that she's supposed to take me to a jeweler and have the guy make me whatever pendant I want, no matter the money and what she wants- it's supposed to be whatever I want.
My mom told her not to worry, and this amazing woman got up again and brought us some apple pie she had baked herself the day before. She said she made it specifically with gluten-free flour for me. I couldn't believe it. She was both feeling and looking like shit, and still made us cake. She couldn't remember what she had for breakfast that day, and yet she still remembered that I can't have gluten right now.
The cake itself was slack-baked, had no sugar (I think she forgot about it), but I ate like three whole pieces. My grandma always made the best apple pies, and they'll always be tasty to me.
Like a week later, she had to be admitted into the hospital again, in time for her surgery. My boyfriend and I tried to call her a few days before, and after the surgery, but each time someone else picked up the phone and told us grandma wasn't feeling so good.
During the surgery, they found new cancer cells in her lungs and guts. She had a breathing tube, could hardly do it on her own. Every time I asked my mom how's grandma been doing these past few days, I heard she's not good. She's stable at the moment, but it's looking bad.
Two days ago was Mother's Day. My mom went to see grandma, since it's her mother. I can't even imagine how shitty she must've felt.
Everything about this was looking bad, but we still had some hope that grandma will be okay.
And, as I'm writing this, I just got a call from my father. He told me that grandma died just moments ago.
I'm sitting here, crying like a baby, but maybe her Angel was telling the truth. At least she's not suffering anymore. Maybe she is actually okay now.