she's dying

my grandmother is dying. she has lung cancer and only told us in april. apparently it is pretty bad. i haven't seen her since april when kim (my sister) got married, also the weekend she made the announcement. she has been doing chemo but my mom told me tonight that the doctor gave my grandmother a time table for how much longer she should expect to live. she has once again chosen to leave out important details. she isn't telling us how long the doctor gave her. why? isn't not knowing worse? she has smoked all her life. i struggle with feeling angry and bitter. it's not a press release, you smoke...you get lung cancer. mimi, my grandmother had the audacity to say it isn't related to smoking. oh yeah and i was born yesterday.

and now she is dying. it doesn't feel very real to me. i have only lost one grandparent in my whole life, and that was when i was pretty young. besides my grandpa, no one close to me has ever died. i am thankful for that. my life thus far has been about celebrating life...birthdays, marriages, babies, not about mourning death. this begins a whole new part of my life and honestly i don't know how to approach it.

to make matters worse, mimi and fafa (where did we get those names?) live in ny. not exactly a weekend trip. this is ridiculous, i am complaining about visiting ny, not about my grandmother dying. maybe i am in denial.

i don't think i know how to deal with death.

the funny or maybe even ironic thing is this, when we visit mimi and fafa they have this thing that they have always wanted the grandchildren to do. there are a million of us so really it is a good idea but now seems so morbid. the things that we grandchildren would like to inherit we put a sticky note with our name on the item. always seemed smart until the day she actually told us she was dying.