A Long December - December 22, 2011

I have a love/hate relationship with December.

I like Christmas and almost everything that comes with it: the lights, songs, decorations, and the myriad of ridiculousness in the name of 'jolly holiday spirit'.

I spend hours wrapping gifts, fussing over all the little frills and touches, even though they're gonna be ripped to shreds in seconds. I don't care; I love it all, so no, this isn't an I hate the holidays story.

But I also have issues with December.

There’s an old Counting Crows song called A Long December. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but lately it keeps popping into my head.

Probably because December is coming. December 22, to be exact.

That was the day my grandmother died.

Calling us close doesn't really cover it.

Grandma was the center of our family, but she was someone I deeply depended on. She was the mediator, peacekeeper, and often the buffer between my mother and me. Mom and I loved each other; we just...didn't always understand each other.

Grandma did. She had this way of making things better while never making a big production out of it.

And at that particular point in my life, I needed her more than ever. My marriage was over, my finances were in the proverbial toilet, and I was living with my grandparents again.

Not exactly how I'd pictured my thirties, but there I was.

By late summer of 2011, something was off with Grandma. Now normally, she was pretty vibrant and energetic - the usual old-age complaints, sure, but this was different.

She'd become tired and started getting headaches, chalking it all up to getting older.

Then her personality changed.

Where she was always positive and encouraging, now she was irritable, snappy, and withdrawn.

I'll never forget one particularly beautiful day in early September. She was slumped at the dining table, sunlight streaming in, her head in her hands, looking completely defeated.

That wasn't my grandmother, and I knew something was wrong.

She saw doctors but made my grandfather and me promise not to breathe a word to anyone, especially her two children. Nobody could figure out what the problem was, and she didn't want anyone worrying about her.

Of course she didn't.

As her health continued to worsen, keeping her secret became ridiculous. Grandpa wanted to tell but was afraid of hurting his wife by 'betraying' her.

I remember him saying, "I've got a big yellow streak up my back right now," but with his permission, I finally told their children.

It went about how you'd expect.

Shortly after, Grandma was rushed to the hospital after another doctor's appointment. Scans revealed a brain tumor that was bleeding and causing swelling.

Five-plus hours of surgery later, the doctors told us they'd removed as much of it as they could. Which I realized meant it was worse than we'd thought.

Glioblastoma.

It was aggressive, and it was terminal. That word landed like a bomb in that little room; there's just no way to ease into that.

Before the surgery, the doctors asked Grandma who she wanted making medical decisions for her if she couldn't make them herself.

She chose me. And I don't for a second think there was anything particularly symbolic about that; Grandma was always practical as hell.

I was in my thirties, a single mother, and knew exactly jack shit about glioblastoma, but suddenly I was her medical proxy.

Grandma knew her family well and that we all loved her fiercely. But what she wanted was someone who could see past that and make the hard decisions if it came to it.

Now, why she thought that was me, I'll never understand.

All I do know is that it changed everything.