We see her once every few years when we are at Disney or when I was traveling on business a lot I would sometimes pass through for an afternoon. This was the second time Juliana got to meet her and obviously time that she met the boys. My grandmother had twins so she was especially excited when she found out about the boys. This is when she got her first look at them (the wedding was outside at a golf course). She just stared at them for the longest time and then she sat and held each one of them.
There isn't much family on my Dad's side. There is my Grandmother, his older sister and brother-in-law and their children Scott and Kim, his older brother and sister-in-law, and us. I have just the 2 cousins on that side of the family and my cousin Scott is engaged to someone named Jennifer - so we have 2 Scott and Jennifer couples in the family now. Here we are with my Grandmother - not the most photogenic person in the world and it had been a very long day for her at this point - they left shortly after this picture was taken.
Over the past few years she has started to lose a step - no surprise since she will be 88 years old in a few weeks - but she seemed to be able to manage and was in good health, plus she has friends in her community that checked in on her. Last week she took a bad fall - I don't think we will ever know exactly what happened, best we can tell she had been sick and not eating well and passed out and when she woke she was too weak to get up. That seems to have happened last Tuesday night. When her friends called to check on her in the morning, she told them that she had fallen, but not to worry she was all right (my Grandmother is too stubborn to ask for help). Thursday morning they decided they should check on her, and my Grandmother was still on the floor.
She spent the next few days in the hospital and was moved to a rehab center this past Monday. My aunt went to FL over the weekend and she has been staying close to her. My Grandmother keeps asking when she can go home, but she is weak and isn't working with the program to help improve herself. At this point she is probably not going home again.
Moving somewhere else in Florida doesn't make sense since there is no family. The best alternative seems to be for her to come to Pittsburgh. Scott and I visited an assisted living facility today with my parents. It is close to our house so we would get to see her and she would get to spend time with her Great-Grandchildren. It would be such a huge change for her - I had to fight back tears while we were sitting in the office talking about options. It seems so unfair to be talking about her and potentially making decisions about where she will spend the rest of her life while she is in a rehab center in Florida convinced that she is going home soon.
My Dad is flying there on Sunday; he is the one who will need to have the hard talk with her about the possible options. It's likely that when he returns home my Grandmother will be with him.
I love the idea of my children knowing their Great-Grandmother and I think it would be good for her as well.
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