This is a follow up to the earlier post about my grandmother.

I certainly would not read anything into this other than it was a chance to me to see the scope of life. Yesterday I touched my grandma as her organs began to shut down, today at the noon meeting my friend Lee's sister told me to hold her baby so she could grab a smoke. I looked down out that tiny 3 week old baby in my arms and I was so aware that everyone has an entrance and an exit. How anyone could teach this little thing enough to make his way in the world is beyond me. How do you try and show a baby how to be a good human. He is only three weeks into his life and my grandma is 3 inches from leaving hers. Both have been awesome and moving experiences and I have nothing but hope for us all.

What a Priveledge I had yesterday.

My grandmother's body had begun the process of shutting down and preparing her to leave on Friday. When I woke up I heard the voice of intuition tell me to get dressed, drive to Daingerfield and sit with her a while. Just as I was putting on my shoes my aunt called and I told her I was on my way to the nursing home. My grandmother was in her bed and the back was raised so it looked like she was semi sitting up. She held her neck up and I was supprised she wasn't laying flat out but my aunt told me because of the copious amounts of fluid build up she couldn't lay down flat. She was very quiet and only made noises as pain waves would hit her. Even the noise and the long physical drawing up of pain were hushed and muted.

I stroked her hair several times and touched her face and arm as I spoke to her. Her eyes would open periodically but she wouldn't appear to focus on anything in particular. The wonderful nurse she has tried to get her to eat horrible looking ground up and wet down food but it really wasn't happening.
I sat there with my aunt who has been there every step of the way as age, then Parkinson and Alzheimers took over. She received more verbal tirades than anyone should hear from their mother due to her illnesses. She just needed someone to sit and let her talk as we sat beside with my grandmother, who's organs were shutting down. There were moments when it was quiet, and my grandma with tense up and moan. Then relax again. At one point I felt so much peace fill the room that the hair on my arms stood up. The world didn't exist outside that little room, with my grandma , my aunt and me, surrounding by the pictures and things that represented Grandma's time on the planet.

My grandma is 93 years old and she has been stuck in a nursing home for a long time. Her leaving isn't so much an ending but more like being set free from a miserable place and from a body that has been out to get her for the last 50 years. lol

I would not have had this sacred experience, just as sacred as being in a room that is filled with a life being brought into the world, if I wasn't clean. I may have been in the room but I would have missed the experience all together. I'm grateful beyond words not to have had to take some xanax, valium, Klopine, shot of liquor, in order to get my body where it was suppose to be and yet miss the miracle of being present and in it.
It is something that if you had told me I would have made the short drive and stayed there without looking at the clock every five minutes to insure my impersonation of a caring person looked real then stayed there the appropriate amount of time I would not have believed you.

When I get to clear my head of all the trash of "What a good boy does" and I take my spiritual centeredness that the program and my own spiritual practices grant me, I suddenly can enjoy/be apart of/feel the life that unfurls in front of me. Real life.

I am so thankful to be a human, a recovering addict and a being of spirit that has the capacity to feel , love and understand on a super-human level that life is indeed quiet and sacred. Sacred not just in the end but in the moment.

I'm not sure how much long it will be before she finally gets a clear exit out of that old woman's body but I know she has earned the right to rejoin whatever source origin she came from. I think the source is love, and I send her with love to love.

Sitting with grandma for a couple of hours may have enlightened me in my own life to just how beautiful every part of the experience is, the experience of one more hour on the spinning rock, 3rd from the sun.