Published on: Apr 18, 2008 @ 20:08 – 
My paternal grandmother passed away yesterday, quite suddenly.  I don’t deal well with death at all, so I cope in my own way.  I have only seen them a handful of times in the last 20 years, but I have always kept in touch via letters.  It does make me sad.  What is even sadder is that there won’t even be any memorial service.  I was really hoping I would be able to pay my last respects somehow.  All I had a chance to do was send her flowers about a month ago wishing her a quick recovery from a bypass surgery she had.  That is the last thing she got from me.  My dad said she said they were “lovely”.  I felt good about that.
My dad was close to my grandma.  That was the only person he looked forward to talking too each week.  He just got back from New Mexico, probably less than two weeks ago.
So anyway, yesterday I was at my grandma’s house doing some cleaning in preparation for her to finally come home from rehabilitation.  Paul calls my mom and then she passes on the message that Paul think my dad is having a mini-stroke and that he was covered in blood.  So something my dad told him on the phone was serious enough for him to call us.  About 10 minutes later, we get a phone call from my dad at my grandma’s house.  I pick up the phone and I’m like, “hello, hello”… and all you could hear was wrestling around and dead air.  I hung up like 20 seconds into the call.  He calls again 2 minutes later… does the same thing.   I got panicky and I thought back to his last major stroke and how the ambulances got called for that.  For his last one, according to him, he had called his doctors office for a refill on his prescriptions and when the picked up the phone, they could tell something was wrong because he couldn’t speak.  My dad didn’t realize he couldn’t speak (so he says) because he lives alone and doesn’t talk to himself.  So the doctors office called the first time.  Well, I thought about that, and I though, OMG, maybe that is happening again.
At this point we hadn’t found out my grandma had passed yet.  It was only after I called the paramedics for him, that we found out.  So this mini-stroke, on top of that horrible news, I was afraid it would be bad, or he would end up hurting himself.  So when I called 911, I got this snotty operator who finished the call with “Well, I don’t know what we can do but we’ll send someone over there”.  I’m sorry, but when someone calls 911, you don’t say “Well, I don’t know what we can do!”.   When the paramedics got there, my dad called my brother and bitched him out royally for calling them, and he refused to them in.
I don’t know what happened after that, but I can only assume the worst.  I got a phone call from the police a couple hours later saying his living conditions were deplorable, and that was about it.  My brother went up to visit him tonight, and he went on about how horrible we are, how bad we are for putting him there.  Yeah, how concerned we are to think of him and make sure he’s ok.  Yeah, we are so awful.   I would hope that someone out there would care just as much about me to make that kind of decision.  I only wanted them to go over there and check on him, but I have a feeling he made it worse for himself.  My brother said he had a black eye, swollen foot and was covered in bruises.  He claimed he fell into a door.  I’m sorry, but those types of injuries don’t happen when you “fall into a door”.  I really really think my dad fought the police or paramedics once they got there.  I have a feeling he wouldn’t let them in, they kicked open the door (concerned for his safety of course), and he became combative.  That is the nature of my father.  I wish I could say he wasn’t that way, but he is.    I think I will try to get a copy of the police report so I can find out what happened.
This is all horrible. I  know my dad is feeling even worse because his mother died, but he doesn’t need to take it out on us, we were only concerned about him.  And we did this before we even found out what had happened.  All we wanted to have happen was for him to get checked out, and make sure he was ok, not hurting himself or having a major stroke.  If anything else happened, it is because he’s a dumb ass.  I’m waiting to see if it ends up in the “Off The Blotter” section of the newspaper, or he ends up in court for something stupid like that.  I would like to know the truth.
God I am so frustrated right now.  I can’t handle all of this emotionally.  I don’t need my dad going nuts and freaking out on top of dealing with a death.  Right now he’s probably feeling as if he has nobody to turn too, but I can’t help him.  I can only help him when he realizes that we only did this to help him.  I will not go up to see him as long as he is tearing us apart like he has been doing.
As far as other news is going… Matt has to go to Phoenix for a week in May, and that sucks.  Now I have to get up at 7:30 every morning and drag Chris and Andrew out to take Chris to school.  Andrew is a cranky waker so that won’t be pleasant I’m sure.  We are going to Vegas at the end of May.  Originally I was planning to take two of our days and drive down to visit my grandma, but that won’t happen now.
Matt ends his first year in the Master’s program at Wayne State next week.  Hopefully he will be done after one more year of classes.  He’s done really well with a 4.0 in all of his classes.  He’ll earn it when he’s done though, he is constantly working on some project and studying on top of his job.  I got 3 classes coming for the summer semester, nothing too terrible I don’t think.
I’ve been doing pretty good working out lately.  I have managed 4 days per week for the month so far.  I haven’t weighed myself yet, but when I start feeling good i’ll know something is working.  This week alone I have spent 2.5 hours walking, for a total of like 7.5 miles or something like that, most of which was on a steep incline.  It probably helps that I started taking my Metformin and Wellbutrin XL again.  Since starting it up again I wake up refreshed each morning rather than so sleep as I have been all winter.  I take both of them for the off-label effects of weight loss, not to mention the Metformin keeps my blood sugar regulated.    The Wellbutrin is also helping me not to lash out towards my father in unspeakable ways for his behavior.
Oh well, life goes on, and with death comes life.  I’ll figure out how to cope on my own.