Is it time to say goodbye Part 1

This past Friday my mum came into her living room where I was relaxing and watching the tele, and said to me, "Next week I want you to began working on your grandmothers funeral program". 

Wow! I really had no response to that other than, "ok".

Just a month ago my Grand, as I prefer to call her, was up strutting around church, telling people off, making her demands, going to the movies, and living life. It seems that within a week that woman disappeared, and was replaced by some other being. 

I'm amazed at how fast the mind and body can deteriorate. Neither the mind or the body ask us if we are ready to let go of life as we have known it. It just seems to leave us when ever it wills, never to return.

We have know for sometime that my Grand has Alzheimer, just not the exact stage of the disease. However, we were hit with even more life changing news several weeks ago. My Grand has stage 4 cancer-small cell neuroendocrine of the lung. 

Though my Grand is not aware of the cancer that is eating at her body, her mind and body are slowly leaving us. Overnight she is either unable or has forgotten how to swallow her food, move her legs so that she can walk from her favorite chair to her bedroom, bath herself, or even feed herself. 

On Saturday I went to visit her in the nursing home where my mother, against her desired will, had to place her so that she could receive proper care. As I watch the therapist try to get my Grand to do a simple task like stand, I could't help but ask myself which intruder had stolen the strength of this once vibrant high hurdle track star? Was it the cancer, the alzheimer or the depression from the recent loose of her last living sibling? Which everyone it is, it has left me looking at a woman I don't recognize.