Sadness in real life.

I was planning on participating in this month's Kindred Creations collabkit, but real life got in the way. My grandfather's health has been in decline for some time, but now my father has had at least one stroke and has been diagnosed with TIA, which is an illness my family is very familiar with. My Granny, my father's mother, had it for many years.

TIA basically boils down to mini-strokes. Granny died less than a year ago because she had a severe stroke and was given a prognosis of no quality of life; her personal paperwork said that she didn't want life to be prolonged under those conditions and that we were to let her go.

Losing her was extremely painful for me and my family because she had always been so loving, and she was always there for people. I'm not Christian, but she was, and she lived it. If she told you that you should give someone the shirt off your back, she said it as she was removing her own clothes.

It is very painful to have lost her to stroke, to be watching my grandfather's (my mother's father) health declining so rapidly after his stroke, and now to see my father's health and mind be in such a precarious position.

I hope to be able to get back to my scrapbooking projects soon, but I know I need a little time off to be able to be with my family and deal with work and the real world for a while.