An Essay in memory of Bunny, written by Jeff

The following is an essay written by Jeff as part of a class in effective writing:

Some Things You Never Forget

I was a senior in high school when the world showed me that life really does happen. It was April 12, 2008, and my entire family was at the St. Patrick’s nursing home in Natick, Massachusetts. To clarify, when I say my entire family I do not just mean a few people in one of the patient’s rooms. I mean an army of toddlers to elderly taking up the entire west wing of this nursing home. My dad is one of eight children, all of which have kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews in one way or another. I have 36 first cousins and almost an equivalent of second cousins now. As I walked around the west wing, talking and sharing stories with all of my family, I could not help but stop and think how such an enormous group of people all related came to be. It was at this point that I walked into the undersized room that had been crowded for so many hours. I saw my grandmother. She was lying in her bed, almost a skeleton now, breathing deeply, almost like a gasp, fighting to stay for as much time as she could while her children, grandchildren, and great grand children circled around her telling of their fondest memories and hilarious stories they had of her. My grandmother hated it when she missed a good story. It was almost as if she was taking these words into her body with every breath, to keep with her as she moved on to the next stages of her life. I will never forget her breathing that night.
My grandmother, Bunny Nealon, had been sick for a long time. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2004 and had been in a nursing home since 2005. Before she was admitted to the nursing home she lived in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, the same place that she and my grandfather brought up all 8 of my aunts and uncles on my father’s side. Living just ten minutes away from Hopkinton I used to go to my grandmother’s house often. Sunday night dinners were a family ritual for a long time, and more often than not my favorite meal of the week. As we all piled into my grandmother’s house for the last meal of the weekend I knew that I would be leaving with new stories from my cousins, aunt and uncles, and most importantly my grandmother from the past week. As we would leave after a long night of eating and stories, she would always stand by the door waving, never leaving until the last car drove fully out of view. I will never forget the image of her waving in her doorway for many minutes making sure that she didn’t forget anyone while saying goodbye.
When I was fourteen my dad told me that my grandmother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Being fourteen, I knew what the disease was. However, I did not know the severity of it what so ever. My dad began to explain to me that in short, it is when you have trouble remembering things. After this conversation, I began to think about what my grandmother would be losing due to this disease. In thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that I knew no one that embodied more memories that should never be forgotten as her. My grandfather died when my father was in 7th grade. It was at this point that my grandmother gained the unconditional respect of everyone in her town. She began to raise 8 children on her own. The oldest were in college, and it was at this time in everyone’s lives that big transitions were being made. My dad was approaching high school, my oldest uncle was going into his last year of college, and everyone in between was at a critical stage in their lives. Hearing stories from my father as well as my aunt’s and uncle’s, makes me strive to be more like my grandmother every day. She flawlessly began to embark on raising, mentoring, and being there for her eight children, and she did this alone. When we went to Sunday night dinner that week there was a part of me that expected to see her frail and sick, I remember wondering if she would know who I was, I was scared. This was completely false, and as I later came to learn Alzheimer’s is a slow acting mental disease that had nothing to do with one’s physical health. As weeks past, she seemed normal to me, although I noticed that she may take a little longer to recall a fact or memory. I could also see the frustration in her face when this happened, although she would never come out and say it. She was the type of person that never let you feel bad for her. As the disease got progressively worse I never saw her once get angry or upset with her condition, instead she would joke about it. “I can tell you what the temperature was on my wedding day, but I can’t tell you what I had for lunch,” she would say, always trying to get a laugh out of someone. I will never forget how positive she stayed throughout the entirety of her battle with Alzheimer’s.
Being in her nursing home room the night that she passed away sent me on a roller coaster of emotions. In the years proceeding, she had slowly begun to forget our names and eventually had trouble speaking in the last year or so of her life. Despite this, whenever we would go to visit as a family, telling stories of past years, a smile would never fail to come across her face. This is how we knew she could hear us, and we knew she could hear us the night she passed.
What goes through someone’s head the night that they pass away? I could not help but look at my grandmother and think this in between tears. Was it the countless sporting events that she watched her children and grandchildren play? Is it a loved one that she knew she would see when she made it to the other side? Is it of things that you wished you had done while you were here? Or is it of nothing? I believe someone does not pass away until they have come to complete peace with their life on earth. I think it was really easy for my grandmother to do this with the wing of her nursing home packed full with people that she had direct positive influences on in her life. Despite the sadness, everyone knew it was her time to go. The distress of the situation slowly subsided for me, and I came to realize something about life from my grandmother’s death. Make good impressions on people, live life to the fullest, and never let a hardship get you down. I have never seen more people at a single funeral than I did at my grandmother’s, and it is because this is the way she lived her life and it is what she preached to her children. We are only here for a short time and we are defined by the impacts we make in other’s lives, not our own. We do not live forever , but memories can, and it is through the memory of her in all of the lives that she touched that I, as well as so many others, will never forget my grandmother.