Yesterday was certainly a blogworthy day.  From beginning to end it was lulless.  Here is my attempt to capture it.

My grandmother is dying in Seattle.  Dad and mom and I are on our way to spend the day with her.  I love my grandma and I'm so glad to get to spend some time with her before she goes.  She loves me and I know because she always winks at me.  Even when she is sick in the hospital and can't speak and can't kiss back, she winks.

The day began on a much less sentimental note than that however.  We hop in the car at 9:15 and dad almost immediately reaches for the radio to turn to Rush Limbaugh.  Mom and I groan.  Thus begins (or continues rather) the lecture on how important it is to keep tabs on the changing face of our world.  The lecture begins with the Supreme Court and liberalism and the downfall of our nation.  Somehow that segues right into questions of prophecy and the apocalypse. 

The lecture becomes an argument and Dad and I are waging war.  Dad representing a modern line of thinking and me, representing a less than modern line of thinking.  I talk about Jesus and how the religious people missed Him because they interpreted the prophecies to meet their ethnocentric and cultural ideas of a King.  Via Donald Miller, I challenge him to assess his understanding of the second coming of Christ without viewing it through an American Christian's perception.  He gives me several good arguments and I come back with several more good arguments and we come to no conclusive agreement.  Driving by the towers of downtown Seattle the argument fizzles and I think about Jesus and how I don't want to miss Him when He comes again.

Coming into grandma's hospital room I can tell that she is in much worse shape than last week when I saw her.  Last week she could recognize me and she could say a few words.  As I left, she asked me how "they" were and I knew she was asking about my siblings.  Her last words to me were, "tell them goodbye." 

She hasn't had anything to drink or eat for 48 hours because her body can no longer succesfully perform those functions.  She is swollen from the fluids that couldn't be processed by her liver.  Her eyes itch and she can't move her hands to scratch them.  I watch her breath each breath wondering if it will be her last. She looks up often and someone asked her if she sees angels and she said yes. 

I couldn't help but wonder what was keeping her here.  Her body is worn out and her mind is dulling but her spirit is still strong.  She is about to step onto a gilded street and see her husband of almost 60 years.  Yet she holds on and continues breathing.  I concluded by the end of the day that the reason she was holding on was not fear or regret, it was her family.  She has spent 89 years on this earth loving people and establishing a family that cares for others.  They are with her now in her last moments singing her favorite songs and reading scripture and caring for her the best way they know.  She is torn between the seeds of love she has planted on this earth and the treasures she has stored up in heaven.  One day all will be one.

Grandma's favorite hymn is "My Jesus I Love Thee."  We sing it and mom and dad and my aunts cry but I don't.  I sing through all the verses looking at a styrofoam cup and keep my composure.  But I lost it when we sang the last line of the song. 

        If ever I loved thee, my Jesus tis now.

And I reallize as I sing that line that I really do love Jesus and I love Grandma.  And a major reason why I love Jesus is because of this woman's faithfulness and love. 

Grandma, fighting for breath, winked one last time as I kissed her goodbye.

I didn't think about politics on my drive home.