The last thing Nick ever expected was for Ruby to die.
His mother's death devastated him.
Sammy and everyone else close to her had to place it as a possibility.
At her age and the type of surgery it was, well, even Ruby herself made sure all her affairs were in order the weeks prior. She even took Nick and Sammy aside the night before and attempted to talk about if something like that were to happen. Nick wouldn't hear one word of it! He stormed out of the room and refused to discuss anything about the surgery at all. In his mind, Ruby would get through it, would have to take it easy and recover but recover she would!!
We're never fully prepared for the loss of someone we love.
For Nick, he went into a denial state at the hospital, which for Sammy was quite alarming. When Nick finally accepted that Ruby was indeed,..well, dead, he shut down. Sammy took care of everything at the hospital as Nick basically couldn't. He didn't speak one work on the drive home and once they were there, he told Sammy not call anyone, that was something he would do, that his mother would want him to do and then he shut himself up in Ruby's room.
Sammy did tell the twins and Linnie of course.
They took the loss of their grandmother very hard.
And Nick locking himself in Ruby's room, being unavailable to the children when they needed him the most upset Sammy a great deal. She was close to breaking herself, she loved Ruby too!
Fortunately Nick didn't stay shut up in Ruby's room too long.
He came downstairs clutching her address book. There were so many people to call. Ruby was very active in the community. She volunteered tons of hours at the neighborhood community center. She was their outdoor pool monitor in the summer, she also coached girl's basketball there and helped with just about everything that had to do with the center's annual Holiday play and silent auction. She was in the Garden Club, a local Book Club, she spent every Wednesday helping out at the Food Bank and also spent every Monday and Thursday at a senior center helping with whatever needed doing for the residents. Ruby was always on the go and it would be a big and emotional draining job to call everyone that loved and cared for Ruby.
He looked at the phone and took in a deep breath.
First person he knew he had to call first,... was Dominic.
Dominic had just moved into a new dorm house after moving out of Brianna and Lily's. But was rarely there, spending most of his time at his dad's. I guess he didn't like the students at the house much. Seems Dominic doesn't like anyone or anything much these days. Dominic didn't answer is cell and when Nick tried his dad's number Dominic wasn't there either. Of course he told Darren the news and he assured Nick that he would tell Dominic as soon as he could, that he would even go out and look for him to tell him, he didn't want him to hear it from some other person. Nick was grateful to Darren for that, telling Dominic was not something he wanted to do, (at all). But he tried. So then it was call after call after call as he made his way through Ruby's address book after calling immediate family and friends.
Everyone was stunned, shocked and greatly saddened at the news.
When Nick was finally finished it was very late and Linnie had gone back to her college dorm house to be around her friends. No one could sleep and no one had eaten even. Sammy decided they needed something. It was midnight and Nick looked as though he'd crumble into tiny pieces any moment. The twins looked the same. She whipped up a pot of Grandma's Comfort Soup and had to smile as she did - it was exactly what Ruby would have done.
There's no way to describe it.
It was an evening drenched in heavy, heavy sorrow.
Sammy pleaded for Nick and the twins to sit at the table
and at least try to eat a little something.
She told them it was what Ruby would want...
and she was very right about that!
They did their best to eat as a family
but it all fell apart.
Nesnia couldn't even stay at the table,
running off to her room in tears.
It was a family's darkest hour.
Sammy went after her and it was all she could do to get her to stop sobbing.
Finally, out of sheer exhaustion Nesnia fell asleep in her arms.
When she came downstairs Nero was sound asleep on the couch -
the same couch Ruby had been sleeping on so much the last
coupla weeks and Nick was sitting in the darkened corner of the room
gazing out the window into the wee morning hours.
She covered Nero with a blanket
and then went over and gave Nick a hug, asking him if he needed anything.
He told her no, thanked her and then told her that he loved her,
his eyes beaten up and swollen from all the tears.
She wanted to say something, do something
to make all the pain go away for him
but she knew there was just no way for her to do that.
On auto-pilot, she went to clear the soup bowls from the table.
Ruby's indoor plants caught her eye and she made a point to go over
and water them after cleaning the kitchen.
Turned out they didn't need to be watered -
they were ready for harvest, something Ruby looked forward
to each time like a kid waiting for their birthday.
She was slow to harvest them -
being as gentle as Ruby always was with the plants.
Ruby always planted new seeds right after harvesting
but Sammy just couldn't bring herself to do that.
In another post,....