Have You Ever Been This Low?

Fucking hell people.
The last week or so is sure to rank up there in the All Time Durstest category for yours truly.
The hits just keep coming and coming.
Last Friday my grandmother died. My father's mother.
She was 79 years old and smoked for most of her adult life.
She was only my second grandparent to pass away.
My mom and dad and I flew up to Worcester, MA first thing on Saturday to help my dad's sister with the funeral arrangements and whatnot.
My dad's parents have been married for 55 years. It's gonna be hard for my grandfather to function without his wife. Like my dad, he has some sort of muscular disease that severly limits his ability to walk and also use his hands.
My grandmother did everything for him.
We got up here and he was literally grey when I first saw him.
He was wheezing badly everytime he took a breath and was not doing well at all. Saturday evening my dad's sister called a nurse friend of hers to check my grandfather out.
She recommended we take him to the hospital.
I'm glad we did.
It turns out that he had been walking around all day with a case of septic shock(his kidney's had all but shut down), a slight case of pnumonia and a blood clot in his lung.
We were literally about 12 hours away from burying two people instead of one.
We weren't that worried about him because he wasn't even running a fever.
The doctor said he had never seen anything like that before.
My dad was going to spend Saturday night at my grandfather's house with him. If he had died, my dad would have been the one to find him.
My grandfather has been in the hospital ever since and I am glad to say he is recovering quite nicely. The old coot is cussing up a storm and giving the nurses hell(but in a playful way).
He is slowly returning to normal.
He is in the room right beside the room that my grandmother passed away in.
It is the same hospital that I was born in.
Because of his current condition, my grandmother's funeral has been postponed until next Friday.
So we will have to fly up again, but that is a very small price to pay.
I've been spending most of my waking hours at the hospital just hanging with my gramps.
On Saturday we took my grandfather to the city cemetary and he picked out the spots where he wanted to be buried beside my grandmother.
No matter what anyone tells you, nothing can prepare you for that.
It was all I could do to keep it together.
Keep in mind he almost died later that night.
On top of that, it appears I did not get the job in DC that I interviewed for two weeks ago, despite my feelings that I would.
It's a crushing defeat for me, but I'll have to pick myself up and start all over again.
I have no choice.
And then yesterday I was hit with some heavy personal issues that were very unexpected.
I won't go into details about it, but you can probably guess if you think about it.

A very smart man once said "What matters most is how well you walk through the fire."

I try to keep telling myself that.

I'll be back when I pull myself together.