*My Angel*

She was a great woman. She may not have worked or thought for herself, but she raised a large family, and dealt with an extremely difficult husband. She was an angel. She is now my angel.
The night of May 5th 2008, she came home from the hospital; she had gotten very sick. I was too scared to go visit her; the sight of her so weak was too painful to bear. I now regret that I didnt give her that last kiss every day of my life. I went to sleep that night on edge, as I did most of the time she lived with us.
The next morning I rose and went directly into the shower. Outside the bathroom door I heard the sound of my aunt screaming. I then heard footsteps up the stairs and then banging at the door.
"Jessie, please help me! I don't know if its me or if she's really that bad." my aunt Donna said desparatley.
Without thinking I got out of the shower, ran to my room and put on clothes over my still wet body. We then quickly went down the stairs.
There she was lying half off, half on her bed. She never wanted to be in her bed and that day she had asked my brother and my father to move her there. I guess subconciously she knew what was coming.
At first I didn't know how serious the situation was. I had seen my grandma suffer for years at this point, and I thought this was just another one of her episodes. But I soon recognized the severity of it, when she looked at me and tried to speak. There was hardly any sound coming from her mouth but she managed to say, "Jessie, good luck with your car." I had gotten a car a week before, and I couldn't believe she remembered this while she was enduring so much pain. Until the very end she had her head; it was her body that had given up on her.
She then requested her brown coffee cup that she always drank from, and when my aunt handed it to her, she held it to her face and shook her head. "This isn't it" she said.
"Yea, it is ma. Do you want to eat? You gotta sit up if you want to eat ma."
"I can do it myself." she tried to say. She kept saying she'll do it herself until the minute she passed. She fought all the way to the end, and I will never forget that.
It started to dawn on me that my grandma was really sick this time. My aunt then looked at her and said "Its going to be ok mommy, we love you." And instead of sayin "EHH shut the hell up, or your full of shit!" like she probably would have normally done, she just looked at my aunt, and then her head shot up and she looked directly at the ceiling. She was dying.
I always heard people say that when someone dies you see the life coming out of their eyes. I never really believed it until that day. I literally saw the life leave her eyes as she was looking up, which I am sure she was looking at the light.
While this was all happening, my aunt and I were in a state of mahem. We were running around the house, screaming, crying, watching my grandmas breaths become further and further apart. We didn't want her to be revived once again, for what? so she can live another few months in that quality of life? She begged to come home from the hospital the night before, because deep down she knew she wanted to die in a comfortable place around the people she loved. I am glad she at least got to do that.
I wish when she passed I could have been closer to her, hugging her, holding her hand or something but all I could do was cry in the doorway and every now and then peak at her. I was so scared. I wish I could have been more courageous like my grandmother was. She was a courageous woman. Marrying a hot blooded Italian man like my grandfather is probably the most brave thing any one could do! And she not only married him but she dealt with his shit for the duration of his life! What an angel!
While my grandma was in the hospital, my neice was undergoing tests to see if the cancer she had been diagnosed with was cleared from her tiny body. My grandmother had told my mother that she was glad that Jolie was going to be ok. My mother told my grandmother that we had not yet recieved the results. She just looked at my mother confused, like she knew something that we didn't. The day my grandma died, May 6th 2008, a couple of hours after she was gone, we recieved the good news that Jolie was in fact cleared of the horrible disease. She was right, Jolie was ok!
Looking back, I see how peaceful this all was. It was a beautiful sunny, warm day on May 6th. I had a moment of clarity and realized that grandma was now our angel and she would take good care of us. When we got the good news about Jolie, it confirmed this to be true. I love you Grandma Helen Carlucci- you fought hard until the end, and you showed me how to be brave. Thankyou for all you have done for us and our family!!!