Welterusten, oma

On Thursday night I wanted time to freeze. I didn't want those hours counted against my MCAT study time, deadlines at work, and my ever-growing to do list. It wasn't the worst news, my parents and brother are healthy, but it was close. Apparently my maternal grandmother (oma, in Dutch) suffered a stroke and was in a coma.

I love my oma and I am sad that I will form no new memories with her, but she was in her eighties and had moderatley advanced Alzheimers. What really makes the death of a grandparent hard is watching the effect on my parents. My mother was flying out to the Netherlands, after much deliberation, and in the end missed seeing her mother lucid(ish) but just a few hours.

So when my mother returns and I am able to speak to her on the phone, what do I say? What do I say to my mother when she has lost her mother?

And then it was Friday and I had to be at MCAT class. I had to go to my medical school applications workshop - I had to catch up on the work I didn't do while I was staring at the walls on Thursday night. The computer that scores my MCAT isn't going to care that oma died. Neither will the recommendations I need, the deadline for my next vacinnation, my next organic chemistry exam, or the IRB continuing review. Nothing changes.

The biggest change between life before and life in the real world is how hard it is to keep it together. Because nothing changes.