Shooting Stars

So it's been a while. I actually just got up the courage today to finally write again. I've been afraid to write because I know once I've written it, then it makes everything even more of a reality. My last blog was about my Nan... and since then she has gone to be with Jesus. It's been so hard to say the least. It's been hard to say goodbye, hard to believe she's gone, hard to smile, hard to talk about, and mostly hard to remember she's no longer here. More than once I've picked up my phone to call her only to remember that I can't. I miss her so much. She was the only grandparent I have that I've ever been close to. I never had a grandfather growing up, and my other grandmother lives so far away that I only see her like once a year. My nan was so, so special to me and I wasn't ready to say goodbye to her. We had no idea she was to the point of dying. It was so unexpected. And so fast.

Nan got sick on Friday and was sent to the hospital by ambulance and place in ICU. Was still sick on Saturday but improving. Got waaay better on Sunday and got moved into a room, but by Sunday night she got a little worse so she got put back into ICU and then moved to UT hospital to recieve better care. At UT they placed her in critical care, but had promise of her getting better. So on Monday Brad and I left for our trip to Charleston, only because they told us she would be fine. We arrived in Charelston around 3:00pm and it wasn't 15 mins after we checked in that my mom called me to tell me they were sending Nan home with a hospice nurse so she could be more comfortable because they didn't expect her to make it. So we immediately checked back out of our hotel and drove all the way back to Knoxville. It was the longest drive back of my life. I prayed the entire way back that I could make it back so I could say goodbye. We made it to the hospital around midnight monday. I sat with Nan for a few hours and told her how much I love her and how much she has meant to me and I thanked her for being so wonderful. She couldn't talk back, but she responded to me by moving her eyebrows. Brad and I then went to my moms to sleep for a few hours, we'd been on the road for 15 hours monday. We went back to UT around 7:30am. She had gotten a lot worse and the doctors said they didn't think she would make the trip home so we decided to leave her at the hospital. We were by her side the whole day. The nurses said she could probably hear us talking so we talked to her nonstop. (Nan had talked to me a few weeks before about how if she got sick she didn't want everyone being sad or anything. All she ever wanted was for people to be happy.) Nan held on all day long, she fought so hard to stay with us. My mom and my aunts kept talking about how they had so many regrets and they just kept talking about how bad they felt about not doing more for her and things (which of course they did so much for her, everyone has regrets in these kinds of situations) and Nans heart rate kept going up. She didn't want to hear them being sad. So at about 10 til 12 that night I finally said to them, "Nan wouldn't want us to be talking about how bad we feel and she wouldn't want us to be sad, so we should talk about our favorite memories of her and happy things." So that's what we did. We told her it was okay to go and we would be okay and We started sharing memories and laughing and instantly her heart rate started dropping and her breathing got slower. It made her peaceful to hear us laughing and she finally let go. That's all she wanted was to hear us happy. She was so sweet like that.

One thing that really got to me was that I never personally asked her if she was saved. I knew she believed in God and that she read her bible and listened to gospel music, but I never came out and asked if she was Saved. But my family asked her and she said she was. And I talked to my brother and he said she definately was, they had talked about it many times. But I never got to talk to her about it and it was eating me alive. I wanted to hear her say it. I needed to know for myself. So that night that she died, when Brad and I pulled into my parents driveway, I got out of the car and looked into the sky. They sky was so dark, and so clear, and the stars where so bright. I cried out to God that if she was in Heaven with him to please let me see a shooting star. I stood there looking and looking for what seemed like forever(but really is probably more like 3 mins). That's all I needed for comfort. I never asked her, but I knew God would tell me. I kept looking, but saw nothing so I looked down at the ground and Brad told me to go in the house. I looked at him and said "I have to know" and at that moment, I looked up and there it was... A shooting star shot across the sky above my parents house. It went so far across the sky. It was beautiful. At that point I didn't know if I should laugh or cry, so I did both. I about fell to the ground. That moment was the single most amazing thing I have ever witnessed. If that shooting star doesn't prove that there's a God and Heaven, then I don't know what it will take for nonbelievers to believe. I see that shooting star every time I close my eyes and I smile. I know she's in Heaven and I will see her again.