I hope you enjoyed your day very very much. That you received some great looking shoes, and ate great tasting food, and enjoyed great company!

The first call I got that day was my mom, wishing me a happy birthday --- and letting me know my grandma (her mother) had passed just moments prior to her call.

Steve was out of town. Co-workers brought cake and sang to me. Friends stopped by, bringing cards, gifts and food, to enjoy drinks by the fire pit. I booked flights home for my sister and me (frequent flyer miles come in handy).

I just returned home today, having been surrounded by my large family in my hometown since Thursday. The experience was bitter, sweet, happy, sad, invigorating and exhausting. My face hurts from smiling, my sides hurt from laughing, my heart aches for losing her, and my liver hurts because this is the Irish side of the family.

She was the last of my grandparents. I was lucky to have her still. As the eldest of her eldest, I'm now older than she was when I was born. Both of my grandmothers were buried on May 7 (eight years apart).

She lost her vision in her very early teens, cried for an hour when she learned of the inevitability of it, realized it didn't change anything, and never complained. She graduated from high school (with the help of dear friends who read her homework to her every night), and was even Homecoming Queen her senior year.

She was exceptionally beautiful, resiliently optimistic, had a quick wit, excellent sense of humor, and always had a song in her heart and on her lips. She and my grandpa had six kids in a ten year span, and she did most of the child-rearing while he worked long and irregular hours for the railroad. She was an exceptional housekeeper and cook, and she babysat for many of her nieces and nephews, and provided full time childcare for six of her 13 grandchildren, myself included.

She did a lot of international travel, even after my grandpa died. She was a fiercely independent and competent woman, which is why when she, like several of her siblings before her, got Alzheimer's, it was so difficult for her to handle. It was difficult for us too.

Her body and mind were broken, so her death was a release and relief.

It's been an exhausting week.