In loving memory of Doris M. Baker
2003-03-01 / 10:00 p.m.

There are a billion other things I could be doing right now, but instead I'm writing an entry. Which I haven't done in about a week, so I guess it's about time. Something really big, and definitly not good, happened to me this week, and I guess I might as well start out with it.

My grandmother died.

Her name was Doris Marie Baker and she was 85 years old. She has three daughters: Karen, Cheryl and my mother, Cindy. She had 9 grandchildren: Dave, Chris, Andrea, Lisa, Tracey, Liz, me, Teddy and Emily. She even had 5 great-grandchildren: Sean, Connor, Aidan, Laura and Matthew. Her brother, Bud, and one sister, Shirley, live in Wisconsin. Another sister, Marilyn, lives in Minnesota. Her other sister, Mildred died a long time ago.

My grandfather, Dean, died about 7 years ago, and since then she hasn't been the same. She was like the traditional "grandmother-y grandma." Not to the extreme, but she always went out of her way to find snacks for us or something to do while we were at her house. She wasn't a touchy/feely person either, but we always knew she loved us. The most fun I had with her and Grandpa was when we went with my aunt Cheryl and cousin Liz first to Kentucky to drop Liz off at college, and then drove up to Minnesota to visit all the family there. It was nice to get to spend quality time with my grandmother without Teddy and Emily there.

But once Grandpa died, it was downhill from there. She started to get a lot more forgetful, and couldn't take care of herself on her own. We moved her out of her house and into an apartment, but she couldn't be trusted to take her medicine or even remember to eat her meals. That's when my mom and aunts decided that it was time to put her in an assisted living home. She moved to Villa St. Teresa, a nice, small place run by nuns. It used to be a mansion for a family until one of the owners donated it to the nuns. It was a very nice place and they took very good care of the women who lived there. Grandma loved it there, even though she didn't like all of the other women. They had an 8:00 curfew, which was moved to 8:30 on holidays. She always made sure we got her home on time, and pretty soon it became evident that she would rather remain at the Villa then come to family gatherings.

I think everything was becoming too much for her, eventually. All of the great-grandkids are below the age of 4, except for one of them, and family get-togethers were always chaotic, full of screaming and yelling and running around. Understandably, she probably found this hard to handle compared to the calmness of the Villa. So then we started to leave her at the Villa more often, which was her decision. We still visited her though. For her birthday over the summer, we came to the Villa and threw a party, making hot dogs and hamburgers for all the ladies that they ate out on the veranda. It was nice. So she enjoyed her time there.

On Thursday morning, Grandma woke up with a very big headache, and her roommate called the live-in nurse. The nurse took her blood pressure. It was abnormally high, so they sent her to the hospital in an ambulance. Cat scans revealed that she had suffered from a stroke in her sleep and that one part of her brain was internally bleeding. They gave her some drugs, but she became unconscious again. While she was unconscious, she died.

When I came home from school, I thought everything was normal. My mom was supposed to work from 3-8, so I thought she had just left for work. That was until Emily, who had stayed home from school sick, told me that Mommy was at the hospital because Grandma was sick. I hate to say it, but the first thing that ran through my head was, "Oh no! I hope she isn't dead!" That's when my dad came in and was like, "Girls, I have something to tell you." I knew what was coming. He told us that the real reason my mom went to the hospital was because Grandma had already died. I started to cry immediately and went up to my room.

Later that night we drove to my aunt Karen's house. A bunch of family was there and we ordered pizza and just had some together time. Then we started to look at old pictures to try and find some of Grandma for a photo collage. We had lots of fun making fun of everyone in the pictures. It may sound harsh and crude that we weren't mourning my grandmother and sitting around wallowing in sorrow, but my family just deals with death differently, I guess. She hadn't been herself for the past few years anyway, so I think most of us had already gone through the period of sorrow of losing her. This also may sound unfeeling, but we all knew that it was only a matter of time. Her health had continuously been failing her, and she was 85 years old.

Even with all of today's technology, sometimes it's just your time to leave. We're all thankful that she died quickly. There was no long-term suffering involved. Although we had no preparation for this, it was still much better for her. I hope she is in a better place, getting to know Grandpa and meeting Mildred again for the first time in many years. I was given the middle name Marie because that is her middle name, and now whenever I use it, I will remember Grandma.

I hope that now both of my grandparents are looking down on us all from heaven and smiling as they see their family continue to grow and thrive. Rest in Peace, Grandma.