The next morning was a blur of phone calls to his sisters, his parents and checking flight and hotel prices.
My family tends to be very logical when it comes to a crisis; you assess the situation, the pros and cons of each possible reaction and act on the best option for those involved. I'm a super geek so I was busy weighing all the options in a logical thought out manner. What are all the variables? Does grandma have dementia? Would she even know we were there? If this is the end should we go now or wait for a funeral? Is it worth it to go and say goodbye if she doesn't know us? Should just Chris go and take Arwen so they can meet? After a few calls we did find out that she did know where she was and who most people were.
Mid morning I was talking to my mom and told her that I was working on showing more feeling instead of just logical and she advised that Chris, Arwen and I all go to Florida, have her meet Arwen and we could say our goodbyes.
Poor Chris had been so tolerant of my calloused logic while wrestling his own thoughts and feelings of his grandma. I came in from my mom's house and said "ok, we should all go."
Chris' parents would fly into Orlando at 5:30pm, his sister Jenni had already bought her tickets, and Cindy said to let her know which one we would pick out and try to get on that flight. (On a funny side note we picked the same flight as Jenni without coordinating, great minds think alike). We would land at 4:30pm.
Chris made hotel and car reservations while I called all the people our absence would impact, the kids I baby-sit, small group, Sunday morning, a couple meetings to cancel. I pulled out the luggage and started packing.
We stayed with Cindy and her husband Pete Wednesday night. Arwen who will go right to sleep at home doesn't travel well. It took an hour to get her to go to sleep and she was up every hour and a half the rest of the night. We needed to leave the apartment by 6:30am so her tears through the night made for some pretty tired parents in the morning. We made it to the airport with the perfect amount of time before our flight. There's a real benefit to flying with an "infant in arms", they had a special line at the security check point. I guess that it's really only a benefit if there aren't a lot of families flying that day, which there weren't.
I was so proud of Arwen on the plane, she didn't fuss much, took a nice little nap and was able to entertain the children sitting in front of us.
We didn't go to the hospital that night because they were moving grandma to a rehab center.
There's more travel stories, getting the car, finding the hotel, yada, yada, yada, but let's just get to the pictures.
Arwen enjoyed sitting on the tray on the plane.
Arwen and Great-Grandma Butler.
Arwen's not too sure what to think.
Arwen did give in and give a few "high fives".
Kisses for Great-Grandma
I do love my great grandma!
Chris and Grandma
Margaret and Grandma
Arwen cut her top two front teeth on this trip which might explain why she had so much trouble sleeping. She was also allergic to something her eyes and nose wouldn't stop running. I would think it had something to do with the teething but it was more severe outside of the hotel room and she a dry teether. I bought some benedryl which did make the runny eyes and nose stop but she was pretty dopey, not sleepy though.
Chris' grandma is 101 and 9/12 years old. When we got the phone call Tuesday night it sounded like there was no time left. Now I don't know if everyone over reacted, if she was healed or if I'm totally fooled but when we said our goodbyes Saturday evening I thought there was no reason why she couldn't go home and live another year or so.
We woke up at 4:30am Florida time and headed to the airport. Because we had to get tickets at the last minute our seats weren't together so we were hoping that someone would be kindhearted enough to switch places with us. Thankfully a gentleman was willing to give up his window seat for the middle. As it ended up the whole plane was packed except for the seats where Chris and I were so when we were in the air Cindy was able to move up next to us, (Jenni was on a later flight).
It was a lovely trip, short as it was.
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