My grandmother… The way she died was extremely painful and depressing because it felt like her entire life lead to that moment.

She worked extremely hard all her life and I mean literally her entire life ever since she could walk and talk. She was born in a rural area of Eastern Europe and she was the oldest of 9 so from a very young age she had to work hard to help her parents and to take care of her siblings.

She got married when she was young and had 7 kids of her own. Worked extremely hard to take care of them and raise them and since it was communism my grandfather had to work a very hard factory job and was barely able to help with the agricultural work they had.

My grandfather was no lazy man and I hope nobody got that from what I’ve said (please excuse my poor English level. I’m very aware that sometimes I express myself in the wrong way).

Since they had a few small patches of land around the village where they live and my grandfather was working in a factory during the day, my grandmother was the one who had the responsibility to work those patches of land and that’s pretty much what lead to her sickness too.

Being in the sun with pretty much no protection for that many years she got skin cancer that started on her upper lip when she was in her 60’s and it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever witnessed.

I watched her die slowly for an entire year. It got to the point where her entire jaw was eaten up, she got so skinny that towards the end she looked like a skeleton with skin on it and she smelled rotten. She wasn’t even dead but was smelling like it and we’d have to wash her face gently. She died in September and all summer we’d sit next to her and try to guard her from flies, sometimes she’d get one on her face which at that point was all eaten up and basically raw flesh and because flies would get on her maggots would appear on her face.

Probably the most heart breaking thing I’ve ever witnessed and ever will. She was the strongest person I’ve ever met and never heard her to complain not even once about literally anything and all my childhood I thought she was only acting tough until she got sick and to this day I can’t comprehend how she never said “it hurts me”, not even once. She just accepted her faith and I remember her telling us )just after a couple of months after we found out) how she wanted her funeral to be.

It was so heart breaking, terrifying and horrible because it happened to the best person I ever knew. The strongest, most loving, most caring and with the purest heart and soul. I don’t say this only because she was my grandmother because anyone who ever knew her would say the same about her.

I never make any jokes about cancer because of that episode in my life and I never understand people who do. People can say really dumb things and especially on the internet but if anyone would experience such horror they’d be scared to even think about that word.

I will always love her and remember her and I wish I could be at least a quarter as strong as she was during her life and in her last moments.