Under the radar

chrisbell

chrisbell

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6,299
Location
Norfolk, England
I'm afraid (or perhaps you might appreciate this?) that I won't be contributing for the next couple of weeks or so, as I have a submission deadline looming for my distance-learning course and we very sadly lost my grandmother around midday today. She was in the final throes of dementia and had been weakening and fading for some time, but losing her is still hard. It has to be admitted, though, that we feel a sense of relief as she had seemed unhappy for some time and had, after a long (she was born on the final day of 1916), happy and generally lucky life, been suffering from having virtually no quality of life for several months. Though she always used to claim atheism in the past, she had, in her more lucid moments been saying she wanted to be with her husband (my grandfather passed away 18 years ago), so, though I admit to being agnostic myself, I find myself in the awfully hypocritical position of wishing that they are reunited in some sense.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the forum as and when I get the opportunity, and may well post occasionally, but don't be surprised if I don't welcome new members or leap in with advice as is my wont.
 
Chris,

My sympathies go out to you. I lost both my father and my paternal grandmother within the last six weeks. My grandmother was a week or two shy of her 95th birthday, so not too much difference in terms of age from your own Grandmother.

My best wishes for all the arrangements and also in reconciling yours and hers beliefs.

Jon
 
Hello, It is sad to hear that you lost your grandmother, please accept my condolences to you and your family, i am not a religious man but i shall pray for her, i wish you all the best on your distance learning and will miss your comments and knowledge on the forum.

Mo
 
Very sad to hear chris, but like you say if her quality of life had deteriorated then in some way (although painful now) it is a blessing...

thoughts are with you

Best wishes and kind regards as always

Steve
 
Thanks chaps. I'm not exactly a blubbering mess (though of course I expect many hard moments ahead), as we had come to terms with the fact that we could lose her fairly imminently.
As far as what she thought? Well, I'm a Darwinist and agnostic scientist by training, so there's not much difference between how she used to feel and my own instincts. I think her wishing to be with her husband was more the dementia than her own personality; I'm not discounting the possibility that she felt some kind of religious impulse through the fog of her dementia, but I suspect it was a simple wish on her part to be out of the condition she was in. She missed my grandfather greatly, as they had been married a long while when he passed away, and he doted on her. In many ways, the sadness comes when we realise how badly the dementia affected her, how it changed aspects of her personality and robbed her of many of her memories and her ability to derive pleasure from small things which she always enjoyed and appreciated. We're determined to remember her as she was - in my case back when I was a child and throughout my teens and the first half of my twenties.
 
I lost both my Grandmas in their late nineties in very similar situations.

In both cases it was more of a blessing really as their quality of life had significantly deteriorated. I can't deny I was upset, but only for a bit as it was more of a release for them than a tragedy.

I have many happy memories of all my grandparents (who have now all gone) and it sounds like you do too.
 
Hi Chris, you have my sympathies for your loss and best wishes for the upsetting times that inevitably come with a death in the family. I am quietly religious (definitely not militantly so and I have no desire to force my beliefs on anyone else) and so I hope that there is more to come for her and that they can be together again in some fashion.

Good luck with the assignment as well.
 
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