One Never Truely Leaves

I had started this post on February 16, 2016 on my phone. It is now December and hopefully I can finish writing it...

My grandma passed away on Saturday morning (February 13). 

I knew it was going to happen soon. Let me tell you a bit of a back story first.

A couple weeks ago, my parents had gone to Edmonton at Grandma's request. She was tired and knew she wasn't going to be around much longer and wanted to see my mom before she passed. 

[this is where I had left off originally. I'm going to fast forward a bit as I don't remember where I was going with that.]

I had put off calling Grandma, as I wasn't ready to say goodbye yet. She was getting regular blood transfusions and I was scared. I finally called her from my parents house on Friday, Feb 12. It was in the afternoon (after I got off work), but she was sleeping when I called. However Mom's  cousin was there and we left a message a message with him to let Grandma know that I called and that I loved her.  It was the best that I could do. 

I worked the next day at 7am. Saturday mornings are fairly slow at the gas station until about 9:30-10:00am. So I usually spend the morning stocking and then wasting time on Facebook. I went onto Facebook at about 8:30, and had seen that one of my cousins had changed her profile picture to one of Grandma with her mom, her son and herself. As soon as I saw that picture I knew that Grandma had passed away. I then had to close my phone as there were guests coming into the store. About 15 minutes after I saw that picture, my parents showed up. They hadn't even come in the store and I knew that they were going to confirm what I had already known. 

I am glad that I was able to say goodbye to her before she left, even though it wasn't directly to her. It was almost as if she was waiting for me. 

I found out later from my mom that Grandma approved of the tattoo that I had gotten of Grandpa. 

One of Mom's other cousins, Janice, was visiting with Grandma and Janice had asked Grandma if she had seen the tattoo that I had gotten of Grandpa. Grandma didn't even know I had a tattoo. So Janice logged onto Facebook and found a picture of it. Grandma loved it. I'm very glad that Grandma approved of my memorial tattoo for Grandpa (my Uncle Doug also said that even though Grandpa didn't approve of tattoos, he would have approved of mine.) 

I already have my memorial tattoo for Grandma planned out. It is now a matter of throwing the design into the computer, printing it to match the size of Grandpa's, and then going out to Chilliwack to book my appointment to get it done. It'll be about a year before I'll have it done (that is how popular my tattoo artist is. After I had gotten Grandpa done (Oct 2015), I found he was completely booked for 2016.) I know that waiting that long will be worth it. He will make Grandma's tattoo just as great as Grandpa's.