Loss

Three years ago today, my Papa. He was so kind, selfless and funny. He gave and gave even when he didn't have anything left to give. Generous and loving from his head to his toes. Anything to make the people he loved happy. He loved my Nana more then I've ever seen someone love another human being. So when she died on December 10, 2005 he couldn't live without her. He got sick two weeks later, was in the hospital one month later, in the ICU a month after that and in and out of the hospital the next few months and a final ICU stay a few days before we brought him home to die. He made himself live til after my wedding and my honeymoon and then my sister's birthday. He walked (with my father on the other arm) me down the aisle and gave me away. In May, he decided he didn't want to be in the hospital where the IV meds he was being given could only be given to him there, in the ICU. I think he thought he had more time then he really had. He came home on a Tuesday and died in his sleep around 2 am that Saturday as I slept on the couch across from his hospital bed that the home hospice people provided.

I remember being sad but I also remember being relieved. He had been in so much pain, so scared and hardly able to breathe, confined to the downstairs couch for months. He missed my Nana so much he could hardly stand it. Now they are together and that makes me smile even though I wish they were together, here, with me and my family.

I have a picture of me sitting on his lap with a book. He's wearing mickey mouse ears and I'm in footie pajamas.. I think I'm 2-3 years old. I gave it to him the Christmas right after my Nana died, the most painful Christmas I've ever experienced. That picture now sits on my daughter's book case in her room. One day I will tell her all the wonderful things about her great-grandparents and I will raise her the way they raised me. Instill in her the values and morals that they instilled in me. She will know them.

I also lost another beloved family member on this day last year: My Great-Grandma Rich, my Nana's mother. She was 93 years old and still out there with her boyfriend Milo, singing and dancing at the "old folks" home. She got sick with what they thought was pneumonia at first and then discovered it was cancer. She was hospitalized then moved to a hospice where she died a few days after me (and Bella in utero), Joe and my sister visited her. It happened so fast (within a few weeks), it stunned us all, especially Milo. They had been together for over 20 years. She was his life and it broke my heart to see him lose her. She was so funny and talented. She was very into her appearance so we had to put her makeup on when we visited her and again when she passed away. She asked us the first time and we knew she'd have it no other way after she died. I miss her very much. I brought her a 3-D ultrasound pic of Bella and she cried. She put her hand on my swollen belly and cried. She knew she wouldn't get to meet her. But Bella will know her just like her great-parents.

I try not to be sad but it's hard some days. It will just hit me that they are all gone and it takes my breath away. That I can't just drive over to see them or pick up the phone to talk to them. To know that Bella will never meet them absolutely breaks my heart. Some times I feel like I'm not whole. But I know that, one day, we'll be together again and that they are watching over us.

R.I.P Jeri (Papa) Tiley and Wilma (Great-Grandma) Rich. We miss you so very much.