Goodbye Nana

I haven’t posted in a while, I got lazy with Twitter, but I’m going to start posting again and I’m going to start with the most difficult post I’ve written to date.

On June 2nd 2009, my grandmother, my dads mom, passed away, her diabetes finally getting the best of her, unfairly deciding that her heart had worked long and hard enough for the 84 years.

Nana, as we affectionately called her, was a huge part of my life when growing up, and I always felt close to her no matter how far we ended up from each other. This was due in no small part to her watching me and my sister for many years while we grew up. My parents didn’t want to hire a baby sitter and Nana offered to watch us. First we got dropped off at her house down in Inglewood and after she moved to Pasadena she would pick me up from preschool / kindergarten, and watch my sister and I until my parents got home from work, this lasted for years until we moved into our new house where my other grandmother, Katy, my moms mom, was able to take over for the task. But Nana was always there to watch us when needed, not to mention my three cousins, with whom she lived with for many years.

She was always a very opinionated women no matter how old she got, and I always admired her for that, and in the last couple of months I setup a website for her so she could post whatever was on her mind. At the time it was battling MediCare and starting a campaign to get them to remove the 3 year rule on patients who need oxygen and amazingly enough she was making progress on it in a big way, more info can be found at www.hilandlass.com.

She also had a wonderful sense of humor. That women had more jokes stored in her head then most comedians. When she got her first email address one of the fist things she did was collect jokes each day and send them out as “Belle’s Daily Joke List” thus bringing countless laughs and gasps (she loved her dirty joes!) to brightening up countless individuals days, family members and friends alike. I’ve kept just about every single one she ever sent out, knowing that when this day would finally come I could keep a piece of her sense of humor with me.

She was also a great story teller and many a night, myself, sister and cousins would gather around and listen to her ghost stories and have the crap scared out of us one way or another. No doubt a factor in forming my wacky imagination.

She was an accomplished pianist and would play for us on occasion which was always a pleasure to hear. She also had a wonderful singing voice, and actually did both for a living for a while.

Well, I’m glad she and I were able to speak a little more frequently the last couple of months, and I’m very glad I was able to speak with her briefly when she went into the hospital on June 1st. She had already been in the hospital for the same reason before, it wasn’t hard to imagine a worst case scenario.

I’m not religious, but by grandmother was, so to believe there’s a better place, regardless of what that entails, for me it’s no longer having to worry about her well being and for her she’s now in heaven with her daughter and her first husband, both who passed away before her, either way, she’s simply in a better place and that in its self is comforting.

I know you really enjoyed my writing, Nana, and it pains me beyond expression that I’ve now had the sad pleasure of writing about you now.

Man, it’s a good thing blog posts can’t show tear stains.

Goodbye Nana, I will always love you and will always keep you in my thoughts.

Your gentle giant,

Aaron