On Sept 14 the world stopped turning for a moment in my life. I knew that grandpa had been struggling a little but he always pulls through any scary thing he has gone through. Surgeries, life threatening infections, sickness, losing his knee, bad falls. He always pulled through just fine. So i knew he would this time too. Mom and Serena were staying the week with him and mom had planned to leave to go home since he was doing better. I had wanted to call him but i thought I'd wait until everyone left to call and chat and see how he was doing. I was shocked when i got a call around 3pm that grandpa was in bad shape and had maybe already passed away. WHAT?! I wanted to scream. I cried for a minute but then remembered he always pulls through. After all, he was just out riding 4 wheelers with his son, Rod, just last week. He was Fine! I decided not to worry until I had to and went on with my day. Worried, but confident he'd be ok. All I knew is that mom had performed CPR on him and that the ambulance had taken him to the hospital after his heart had stopped suddenly.
An hour or so later I got another call from dad saying that they were finally able to revive him once they got to the hospital. He was responding to voices and commands. I WAS SO GLAD! See, i thought, He'll pull through. Mollie had a game that night so i stuck around to go to that and then i was going to head to Idaho to see him. I text my brother to see how things were and he told me that the epi pump was basically what was keeping him alive and that it probably wouldn't be long before he passed. I rushed home and packed a bag and climbed into my car. My phone rang and my mom tearfully explained that he could hear me if I wanted to say good bye over the phone and that it wouldn't be long before they removed the epi pump. NO! This is not how it was supposed to be! He should last forever! He's one of the greats. I blubbered a goodbye that i sort of wished he couldn't hear. But hoped he could at the same time. I still didn't think he would go. I headed off to Idaho after hanging up and bawling to Chad for a moment. I only made it to SLC before I got the call that he had passed. As soon as they took out the pump his heart stopped immediately. I decided I wasn't in a very stable state to drive and I ended up turning around and coming home. In PAIN. My chest actually hurt. For days. Every time I turned around i was crying from a facebook post or random memory that popped into my head. I was a mess. I had a few days where i couldn't make myself do much. I wanted to be in Idaho so bad but knew I wouldn't do much good there. And I wanted to spend as much time in Idaho for the funeral as I could. So we waited.
It's unfortunate that the viewing was also on mom and Serena's birthday. But in hopes to lift her spirit we all gathered to take her to breakfast in Blackfoot. It helped being all together and knowing that we were all feeling the same broken heart feeling. I couldn't imagine the difficult task that lay ahead of them on their birthdays!
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