Gertrude Margaret Elzas

My phone rang at 1am Saturday morning. It's never good when your phone rings in the middle of the night. Sure enough, it was my Mom, calling to tell me that her Mom, my Grandmother, had passed away. She was my last living Grandparent. She has been mentally ill most of my Mom's life, and she has been in a Psychiatric Nursing Home for about 25 years. When I was younger, I remember Mom and my Aunts picking her up for Holidays and bringing her home for weekends, but she's been in the nursing home full time for probably about the last 20 years. There have been a few times over the last couple of years where she would stop eating, or get a blood clot, or break her hip, and we all thought, "oh no, here we go." And we would hold our breath. My sister and I even drove up to Oklahoma a couple of years ago to see her and say our goodbyes because we didn't think it would be much longer. Sure enough, she would pull through, and be just fine. She fell and broke her femur about a month ago and ended up having to have surgery - after which she did great! Friday night the nurses went in to give her her medicines and she was gone. Very peaceful, in her sleep. It makes me want to say, "what an anti-climactic way to go, Nannie!!" But the more I think about it, She and God had worked it out. She passed just about a half hour before her 82nd Birthday, and we buried her next to my Grandfather, the day after the 20th anniversary of his death. The funeral was nice, very small, just family. Aunt Barbara had picked out a very pretty pink paisley dress for her, and they placed a picture frame with her that had a picture of her and my grandfather on one side and a picture of the 3 daughters on the other. It was all very emotionally draining, but now she is whole and back in the arms of my loving Grandfather and singings praises with God. Rest in Peace, Nannie, I love you.