My grandmother, Sarah Taylor, is dying. Last weekend she was brought into New England Medical Center hospital for extreme low blood pressure, which her regular doctor said Tuesday was a relatively innocuous byproduct of recent medication dosage changes. Ma—I’ve always called her Ma and have been more like her seventh child than her first grandchild—was slated to be discharged on Wednesday. That was before her lungs began filling with fluid, her kidneys began to shut down, and her blood pressure dropped even lower than 60/80. All of this after discovering an inoperable anuerism in her aorta in May of 2007.
She’s so doped up at the moment that she can’t even remember her children or discern how many people are in her room.
On 2 February 2008 Ma turned 90 years old. Her only husband, George Taylor, died thirty years before in December 1977. She never remarried nor even dated, and often cried over her late husband’s grave despite the years.
Although she’s been pronounced dead a few times, given Last Rights more often than I can count, and spent cumulative months in the hospital over the course of her 90 years, this time I don’t think Ma is coming home.
Her passing, so near after my uncle Rick’s death at Thanksgiving 2007, will be a tremendous blow to the Taylor family, one that will almost certainly splinter the already strained family relations.
For me personally, well… Ma’s passing is the event I’ve dreaded all my life, the one that could break my will. I’m stronger, healthier now, but I don’t know how, if, or in what state I will emerge from what seems will almost certainly come to pass in the next few days.
