I will edit a picture of her into the picture once I have it but I don't want to wait any longer to put this up. As of Sunday, February 27th, 2011 at 4:13pm, my Grandma Barb passed away.

She was 58 when she died.

Her Cremation was March 1st at 1pm. My mom and her sister are deciding where to let her ashes go.

I miss her... She was an amazing woman. She was kind, lighthearted, stubborn as every other Weidner woman... She's been through hell, and what brought her down was multiple system atrophy... It's so rare that the doctors didn't know what it was at first. It presents like Parkinson's early on.. But it is a degenerative disease. [link]

My grandma was an active woman. She played four different sports, loved to hunt and go on nature walks... My most vivid memories of her are when she would take me to the nature center and I got to hold the snakes and play with the turtles because she was friends with the staff. I even got to feed a snapping turtle once! And one time when my younger brother was there, we got to hold a big python! The snake crawled down his shirt because it was warm! And for my 10th birthday I went there and got to watch tortoises RACE! Lemme tell ya, those things sure can move when they want too. It was hilarious!!

This disease first took away her motor skills. Then it began to weaken her muscles. It was slow - three years it took to get her weakened to the point where she needed a cane to walk. She fought every moment, insisting on still making things herself and helping herself. Soon after that, maybe a few months or so, it was a walker. A month after that, she got a motorized chair. Even then she was still a smartass, and still a practical joker! She would drive the chair really fast at someone like she would hit them and stop before she did and she would just LAUGH! Then her voice got weak... She used that to make my mom repeatedly ask "What?" one day so that our dog would lick in my mom's mouth! Every chance she got she'd make a wisecrack! Her nickname her whole life was Monster!! A month from the motorized chair... she lost all motor functions, control her her body, her ability to speak drastically fell - and she became bedridden. We were already trying everything to help her but she got continually worse...
The next six months or so were utter agony for everyone. We knew this was the end. And every week she lived, we wondered at how she STILL fought and clung to life. Everyone in the family visited her often, even my aunt who would fly in from china just to visit - with her husband and three kids it was no easy task. There was tension between everyone as time went on and Grandma got worse and worse. Her breath became weak and shallow. She had to yell just for us to hear a whisper. She couldn't turn her head, or lift her arms. Her muscles contracted painfully, and she was on constant morphine. AS NEEDED morphine soon after. She had been losing weight slowly but now it melted off - and she was always a fit woman. Her muscles slowly deteriorated. Facial expressions were all she could do. I know for me it was a great triumph to make her laugh and smile... Every one counted now more than ever before. I would remind her of all the things we've done, and the current progress I am making, and my plans for the future - I'm sure everyone was doing the same.
A few weeks ago all she could eat was liquid, down from even being able to slightly chew mush. Her caretaker (her brother Pete), and her hospice nurse Rita went from the healthy food they gave her in hopes of keeping her up to just giving her anything sweet that she wanted to make her last moments any amount better that they could. Despite all the care she got, she developed painful bedsores... And through all of this helplessness - her mind was fully conscious. Unlike Parkinson's, which merciful dulls the mind of the victim, this disease left her mind fully intact to know every ounce of what happened. She watched as her own body quit her, as she slowly crumbled away. Last Monday she was on oxygen. She could only look at us, moving her eyes about and her face twitching in expressions. Sunday morning her digestive tract failed her 100%. She lay there, no doubt in great pain, breathing faintly and with obvious effort... When I got there I laid by her... She already smelled like death. She couldn't speak at all. She could only gurgle. I tried not to cry for her sake... I told her all about the fun things I had done that weekend, and all sorts of secrets, and told her how much I loved her. Every moment I could only honestly think of how skeletal she was... Her eyes sunken in, the features of her skull poking out clearly past skin that clung loosely... Her eyes... I will never forget that expression. All the time I was there... She was crying.
I had to leave early to take my sister home because she was sick and on the way home was when it happened. I felt like my skin was going to peel off... I had kept saying I wanted to stay just a little longer. I wanted to be there.................. I cried for the loss, out of grief and mourning, but also out of relief. It was finally over. Her suffering was finally over...

But I miss her so damn much...