9 years of grief

Today is my grandma’s birthday. She would have turned 84 if she were alive…

9 years ago, just a couple weeks before our first anniversary, my husband and I went to a friend’s wedding in Tokyo. The event fell on the same week as my grandma’s 75th birthday, but we could not miss an opportunity to visit Japan and be shown around by the locals. It was an absolutely amazing week! We came back thrilled, but exhausted.

It was a Saturday and I was considering visiting my family to tell them all about the trip. It took all of my willpower to get myself together and go to their place in Brooklyn. I spent the whole day showing them tons of pictures and telling them about all of the fascinating places we have seen. My grandma was so happy for us!

Two days later, I got a call from my mom, telling me that grandma collapsed at night in the bathroom and was now in the hospital on life support. She had a brain aneurysm…

To make a long story short, the next few days were spent coping with the heart wrenching news and deciding whether there was any point in keeping her alive. The doctors told us that even if she would recover, her brain had suffered such damage that she would be in a vegetative state.

Despite being completely distraught, once my mom realized that there was no hope in bringing grandma back, she did her absolute best to hurry the Ethics Committee in deciding to take her off of life support. Not only did she want to end the suffering; she also made sure that the date of grandma’s death would not fall on the same day as our wedding anniversary. June 5th will be 10 years since my husband and I got married.