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When they buried her, nobody told me.

It was an accident that they told me at all.  She died at Thanksgiving.  I didn't find out until the New Year.

We were talking about a funeral my father had gone to, and hadn't enjoyed, and my mother responded "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as…"  Then, she turned to me and said "Oh.  I guess I should tell you that your Great-Grandmother passed away."

I didn't cry.

I had done my crying a long time ago.

A year ago, when she told us that there was a baby living with her in her room at the assisted living facility, and carried around a pillow wrapped in a blanket, convinced that it was a child.

Nine months ago, when she was convinced she was lost on the farm where she had grown up.

Six months ago, when she threw her medicine at the nurses and said she wouldn't take it any more.

A few weeks after that, when she refused to talk to us as we moved her into the new nursing home.

And a few weeks after that, when the proud woman who had just barely given in and started using a walker was being pushed around in a wheelchair because the medicine made her too tired to walk.

I had finished crying just a few months earlier, when I had sat by her bed, wondering who this frail old ghost was, and what she had done with my Gramma.  When I realized that she had no idea who I was.

My mother didn't understand that Gramma passed away long before she died.

Description
When they buried her, nobody told me.

It was an accident that they told me at all.  She died at Thanksgiving.  I didn't find out until the New Year.

We were talking about a funeral my father had gone to, and hadn't enjoyed, and my mother responded "Well, at least it wasn't as bad as…"  Then, she turned to me and said "Oh.  I guess I should tell you that your Great-Grandmother passed away."

I didn't cry.

I had done my crying a long time ago.

A year ago, when she told us that there was a baby living with her in her room at the assisted living facility, and carried around a pillow wrapped in a blanket, convinced that it was a child.

Nine months ago, when she was convinced she was lost on the farm where she had grown up.

Six months ago, when she threw her medicine at the nurses and said she wouldn't take it any more.

A few weeks after that, when she refused to talk to us as we moved her into the new nursing home.

And a few weeks after that, when the proud woman who had just barely given in and started using a walker was being pushed around in a wheelchair because the medicine made her too tired to walk.

I had finished crying just a few months earlier, when I had sat by her bed, wondering who this frail old ghost was, and what she had done with my Gramma.  When I realized that she had no idea who I was.

My mother didn't understand that Gramma passed away long before she died.