Her mother had had this thing about living long enough for her great-grandchildren to remember her. I remember her but I don't know if I remember her because of my own memories or because of the stories Nana told of her mom. I want those memories for my children.
My biggest issues this pregnancy has been that my Nana won't be here physically for the birth. She has not missed a birth that she could be at. There were 2 from my cousin that she missed because the woman who had them didn't want the father's family around. The only others she missed, she was in the hospital for. My niece was born in November of 2005. Nana had just gone into the hospital shortly before, so she missed that one. She didn't get out of the hospital until the day before my wedding. She had begged to be released from the hospital just to be at my wedding. She was there for Marty's birth 3 months later. My mom called her at 2 a.m. to tell her to get ready. She said she already was. I have a picture some of her standing in the doorway looking in. There are pictures of her holding him on his first day of life. He was the last great-grandbaby born before she died 9 months later. Since then, 2 more have been born, 2 great-grandsons. This is my first baby since she died. She won't be there. She won't hold this baby on the day that he or she is born. This alone devastates me.
When I was pregnant with Marty, we told her if it was a girl, we were going to name it Jamie Ione (her middle name is Ione). She hated her middle name and didn't want it put on another child. She didn't tell me that, she told someone else that. Luckily, he was all boy, and it didn't matter. If this baby is a girl, she WILL be Christine Ione. She will carry my Nana's name, just as my daughter, Mara, does. Mara's middle name is Lyn after Nana's first name, Evelyn.
The point is I miss my Nana. She didn't even die from her CLL. She died from a fall in the hospital where she smashed her head on the marble window sill. She was on "falls precaution" but no precautions were taken. She got out of bed and slipped. She was never the same, but she lasted a week before she passed away. It would have been different somehow if the disease she had been fighting for 20 years had taken her life, but it wasn't. You can't even sue a hospital for wrongful death when there isn't anyone dependent on that person for monetary support. It wasn't the money we wanted anyway. It was to punish the hospital for allowing this to happen, to prevent someone else's loved one from being killed in this manner. She would have continued to fight her CLL; she couldn't fight the blunt force trauma from the window sill.
She had a memorial service at her church where she took us when we were little until we didn't want to go anymore, and then where she took the first batch of great-grandchildren until she was too sick to go anymore. Later, closer to her birthday in March, we spread her ashes at the river house. The below is what I wrote shortly after she passed away. The last 3 paragraphs (including the last line as a paragraph) was what I read at her memorial service.
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Sunday, December 17, 2006, was my first wedding anniversary. The night before Martin and I had decided to go to the river for the night to be alone and celebrate our anniversary. I didn't really want to go down there because, as I told Martin, memories of Poppa always overwhelm me down there, hence why I wanted to be married there, and I had the intense fear that soon it would be memories of Poppa and Nana that would overwhelm me there. We went anyways. As I sat on the deck that night, I whispered to Poppa to protect Nana.
The next morning, I woke up at 9:51am, and we walked down to the river, and we went swimming. Swimming in the river I was overwhelmed with thoughts of Nana and how she would inch into the water with her inner tube and beer. Martin was inching in with his coke in his hand. We went up to the house where I found the message from my mom with tears in her voice. I called her back full of fear of what I would hear, but sure that it couldn't be what I was mostly afraid of it being. I sat on the steps of the river house that my Poppa and Nana had built as I heard my mom on the end of the phone tell me that Nana hadn't made it...that she had passed away. I told her I didn't believe her, but I knew it was true. Sadly, I hung up the phone and walked back down to the river and cried. Martin packed the van and he drove me as fast as he could to the hospital to see her body before they took her away. I found out at the hospital that she had passed away at about 9:55am, roughly the same time I woke up.
If Poppa was our eagle, ever protective and watchful of us all, Nana was our Eagless who flew with grace in the stiffest of winds, who loved all of her eaglets, who taught us all how to soar with grace. She struggled to live through mountains of pain and countless hospitalizations to see one more day with her great-grandchildren. She was at the birth of any of her great-grandchildren that she could be at, the time of night never mattering. She wanted more than anything to babysit Marty. She said she wasn't sure she could babysit the other babies, but she was sure she could watch him.
Our Eagless has flown away and left her all of eaglets behind to carry on in her memory...to soar with the grace she taught us all...to teach our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren about what love really means and that the most important thing in any life is the family you have. Nana's body may have died, but her soul is immortal, she lives in all of us...and we will take her with us where ever we go and whatever we do.
I love you Nana, and I miss you more than words can say.
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