Death and the Elderly

I keep thinking about this, and have concluded that I do not think it must be very fun to live to be very old.

My gram is 93, laying in a bed in a hospital with a morphine drip, no longer here in any real sense of the word except for a physical presence lying there. She cannot eat, drink, swallow or talk. She doesn't seem to know anyone is around in any true sense of the word. She is, for the most part, a shell with a few still-functioning parts.

I don't get it.

I believe in a loving God. I like and try to believe we are all here for a purpose, and for a reason, even if that reason is unbeknownst to us. I believe in miracles, and that God can and will intervene in our lives at certain points. I'm not sure at all, however, what God's stance really is on death...and at what point He intervenes, or if He lets this part up to us.

Aside from being hit by a bus, illness, and other tragedies, what or who is it that determines when we ultimately pass from this earth? Is my gram in there somewhere looking out from this tiny body? Is she a spirit that is able to somehow hoover and watch us as we come to sit, to keep her company, to pay our respects? Is it her decision - is she staying for a reason - or does she get a choice in the matter? Is it just Gram being stubborn again or has the Dear Lord, in His busy schedule, perhaps forgotten? Is she here for one of us? I know they say that God calls us home when it is our time - but if that is the case, why are there folks like Gram that would likely, were they able to verbalize such things, hanging around when they probably would have preferred a good card game in heaven to this...this slow and mindless ceasing?

I watched my mother leave yesterday to go sit by her mother's bedside, hurting for her. My aunt is there almost daily for gram. I, who have not been to see my grandmother at all yet am heading out there this evening. My cousins, I am sure, will all manage to get there as well. This is what you do when you are part of a family and I come from a particularly loving one so I am sure there will almost certainly be someone there to guard and watch over this tiny little remnant of what my grandmother once was.

I am way too human to understand this. Death is too big to try and put into a little neat box for me...I am one of those people that does a lot better when there are better explanations and reasons for things, and yet a good portion of the time we get neither. People seem to leave far before their time, and sometimes long after, and too much of either is just so very hard on the ones they leave behind. None of this makes any sense, especially when it just seems totally random.

I guess, in the end, all we can do is try to be there for one another and honor each life as best we can for as long as we can. I don't think anyone should die alone, and I am grateful that my grandmother has so many people to go through this last transition with her. I want my chance to say goodbye. That said, I pray she finally gets to go Home soon where she can eat candy again (Heaven must have it, right?) and be able to laugh and sing and dance and get rid of this old, tired body that is no longer a suitable home for a spirit as bright as hers.