My grandma passed away in the early hours of yesterday morning. Not the best timing – mother\'s day (it was my mum\'s mum). She never was one for commercialism. 

I don\'t think it\'s really hit me properly yet, even though I was expecting it for quite a while. She\'s 90, and had 2 heart attacks as well as carrying out various semi-dangerous exploits, such as carrying 10lb of chicken in a backpack around town and blacking out, and trying to catch a bus to the doctors, slipping when trying to get on and breaking her shoulder. It just seemed like nothing would ever kill her – each time something happened she\'d recover and continue doing silly things. 

She has been ready to die for years – my grandad died when I was nine months old so for nineteen years she\'s been waiting to join him. She paid for her funeral 4 years ago. But she kept plodding on and waking up every morning, much to her disappointment. She still made the most of every day and was grateful for absolutely everything – you could give her a glass of water and she\'d sit there saying how wonderful it was. I\'ve yet to meet someone who is that thankful for everything they have. 

We had a huge 90th celebration for her in January and I\'m so glad we did – all the family were there – 4 children and 4 children-in-law, 10 grandchildren and 2 grandchildren-in-law. Some of the family live in Kent, some in Coventry, some in Rugby and us in Staffordshire, so don\'t often manage to all get together, at least not with the ones from Kent. Looks like we\'ll be doing it next week though, for the funeral. 

I managed to stay at my flat at university for the last three weeks, which is pretty damn good for me because I had a massive breakdown in January and was living at home with my parents for about 3 or 4 weeks – I had a really bad xmas, and then recovered a bit and went back to uni for two weeks. Then i had a horrible panic attack and my mum had to come and get me (I couldn\'t drive home) and brought me home. I got incredibly depressed and so anxious that i could hardly leave my room at times. When i could, i commuted to uni. Eventually i got back to living there 🙂 but have been really anxious living at uni. Trying to fight through it, but I knew my grandma was about to have her hip replacement and might not make it so got a bit scared. She did get through it however, and went home after a week. Unfortunately a week was a bit too early for a 90 year old and she fell over the night afterwards and spent a few hours on the floor before the carer found her. Back into hospital, she continued to recover slowly and then last Thursday  night i got a phone call from my dad saying that all of a sudden she was really weak and probably wouldn\'t recover this time. I stayed at university because no way did i want to see her in hospital, especially if she was really unwell. On Friday night after my lectures had finished I drove home. I hadn\'t seen my mum for three weeks and she wanted to stay with my grandma (an hour away) in case she died. Eventually mum came home yesterday after she\'d read through the Will with her 3 brothers. It was a pretty sad mother\'s day and she spent most of the day crying. So did my 2 sisters, but I think I was too happy for my Grandma to cry (yet). I only cried a little, when my mum said that she washed granny just after she died (my mum\'s a nurse) and it was so weird because it was her mum but there was no life and she wasn\'t there. 

My Grandma was a Christian and even though I\'m not, I believe that this isn\'t it, we don\'t just die and nothing happens to us. I reckon she\'ll be reconciled with her husband, hence why I was pretty happy for her when she died, and when I heard she was dying. It\'s been almost 2 decades since she saw him… imagine the reunion! 😀 

Apparently she went peacefully so I\'m happy 🙂 I think the funeral will be sad, even though she wrote in her Will that it has to be a celebration. I\'m not good at funerals – the only one i\'ve been to was my grandad\'s (on my dad\'s side) 5 years ago, and i stupidly decided to see him in his coffin beforehand. Ouch. Never again. Needless to say, as a 14 year old, i spent that whole day terrified and crying. It\'s made me a little bit scared of funerals in general, and I have an actual phobia of dead people. My grandma\'s (closed) coffin will be in the church, and obviously the crematorium service afterwards, so I don\'t know how the hell I\'m going to cope. I\'m rather glad I\'m not American, because they seem to have an open casket at every funeral. Seems a little bizarre to me, it\'s just someone\'s shell. But anyway, fingers crossed I\'ll cope when the time comes 🙁