you can't run forever

My grandmother died yesterday. My Grammy Carol has always lived with my family, and thus was a big fixture in my life, no matter how exasperated we all get when living in each other's pockets day in and day out.

She finally quit smoking about a decade ago, but went on oxygen about two years ago after a bout of pneumonia. Since fall, she's relied on it more and more, and recently was brought to the hospital with another case of pneumonia -- she couldn't breathe with the portable oxygen, even opened up to freeflow.

While at the hospital, they found a mass in her lung: cancer. One lung was nonfunctional, and her CO2 levels were really high. And, well... Yeah. They took her off a few times to try to lower the CO2 levels, but when that didn't work... My mom and uncle decided it wouldn't do much good to treat the cancer. My grandmother had been miserable for a while.

My mom has been relaying most of this over skype for the past few weeks, though I found out that she had died in passing from my other grandparents, who assumed I already knew. My mom had tried emailing my phone, but it never went through. She's had to deal with most of the arrangements and phone call notifications herself, though my uncles are around too.

I was not good. Am not good, I guess. It mostly feels rather surreal, with a couple bursts of oh my god too real. Spent almost two hours on Skype, mostly with my dad who has been distracting me with talk about my comics and shopping and fanciful business plans, and then chatting with shysailor about dating and personalities and random stuff. And then I stayed up to four, reading.

The past few days I've been so antsy with the need to distract myself somehow, anyhow...

But you can't run forever. Maybe that's what they call growing up.

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