A few years ago as I realized my grandfathers diagnosis wasn't good I broke down, I was very sad for months. I mourned a man that hadn't physically passed.
I wrote: Grampa, the last few months I have seen my grampa loose his memory. At first it was here and there. Now he is almost gone. He doesn't remember anything or anyone. It is like someone took his every memory. I am not with him a lot but what I see is sad. I know his time on earth is coming to an end. I don't want this to happen. I love my grampa. I feel like he is already gone. I need to embrace him but I don't know how.
So I think that must have been in 2009. it wasn't dated but the notebook it is in has stuff from January 2010.
I embraced his life, I embraced his memories. On Thursday I got a call from my sister wendy asking if I had gotten dad's email. She said it said Grampa wasn't doing well. Honestly I wanted to visit him every week. I drove past and ran past the care center he was in at least once a week. I only went once it was soo hard to see his shell of a body. He wasn't there, he looked right through me. But I knew it was time to return. I did. We finished lunch then went there. Many people were circled in his room. his deep raspy breathing was difficult to listen to. We sat and chatted with the family for a while then said our goodbye. I leaned over and told my sweet dying grampa I loved him, and gave him a kiss, his skin was so soft, so hot. I broke down and felt like a ran out of the room. I came home and felt I was okay with his passing. later in the evening we went for a drive, I was pulled back to grampa for another goodbye, the final goodbye. He was much paler, his breathing much deeper. We stayed for a long time then decided it was time to go.
Thursday night we packed and decorated our vehicle with Haroldism's (funny things grampa would always say) Headed to bed way too late and got up early. We drove to Logan for our race. Funny thing. The first time I did Ragnar I saw one of my cousins and the thought came to put a cousin's team together. I have a ton of cousin's who run! I bet we could fill two teams! I tried but failed. then last year after talking to Anna we tried again. this time we had 7 family members on our team and we named it Harold's Angels. As we stood together at the start line, taking team pictures of our Van, the phone rang. It was Dad. Grampa had passed. We cried we hugged we said a prayer and I was called to the line. This indeed would be a special weekend.
It was so hard to run. I cried thinking about grampa. I prayed he would be with me while I ran. The first run was ok, different terrain than I was used to so it was hard. Second run I was completely exhausted. I didn't want to be there. I had 8.4 miles to run. I think I cried through at least 4 of them. I prayed for strength. I told myself no one is gonna pull you out of this one, you gotta do it. I decided the more I ran the quick I would be done. I picked it up and started running. I didn't have headphones. All through my run I heard people's footsteps come up on me and pass. At one point I heard footsteps and thought oh another kill for someone else. but they never passed. I glanced back and no one was there. this happened 5-6 times, hearing foot steps but no one there. Pretty sure I had someone running with me. I was able to catch 2 people and pass them too. I talked to Grampa while I ran.
So that is my Ragnar experience. This post has taken me 5 days to write. I will post about the funeralin my next post but it might take me a few days because it is still fresh and losing my grampa is soo much more harder than I thought it would be.
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