And she passed...

I was the last one who spoke to her. I had called her and told her I loved her and to sleep peacefully. She didn't make it through her first night. I'm glad my grandma suffered little if any pain. I learned of her passing during my staff meeting this morning and I stepped out to call my parents and start to figure out arrangements.

I still could not reach my PO. At least this time, his voicemail was not full, so I was able to get his emergency cell number, but he didn't answer that. No one answered the general office line either. I was asked to pick up my aunt and uncle on the way home, so getting in touch with my PO became that much more urgent. Funeral will be Monday, but I need the weekend to put together a beautiful long montage (and find/scan the pictures), and my aunt/uncle need to be in town to be with family (as I do as well).

The montage will give me a nice purpose and gift to my mom, aunt, and uncle. I happen to have vhs tapes of my grandmas wedding (not sure what kind of camera my great grandpa used 68 years ago to film it), honeymoon, some of the childhoods of my mom, aunt, and uncle, old family picnics, and more. I'm currently digitizing them to my computer so I can take clips of my grandma from them to include with pictures in the montage. Some of the videos I don't think anyone even knows about and I don't even know how I got them! I'm going to separately surprise my mom, aunt, and uncle with a copy of the full videos of the childhood one because I know they don't know it exists!

Anyway, none of this matters if I couldn't get permission to go, so I got resourceful and called the regional office. I explained the situation and they gave me the office assistant's direct line here where I go. Voicemail. So, I tried my officer's office one more time. 

He answered!!! I apologized for stalking him and he said he was going to get back to me... About my vacation requests... He hadn't even listened to any of my messages yet!! I explained that I was calling because my grandmother passed away and I needed permission to pick up my aunt/uncle and leave the state for four nights... La la la...

He heard me out. He told me that I can let me mom know not to stress because he will grant me the trip but I needed to go into the office this afternoon. No problem. I went into the office at 2pm. I didn't leave til 3:15. We talked the entire time.

I had to do a vacation request for the trip and I will need to bring back a program from the funeral - I guess people lie about such things. He also granted me permission to attend my friends' wedding reception in November and when I explained the invite was done by evite, he logged into my evite to see it before he granted the permission. 

He was much more reluctant to grant permission for the trip to see my father in December due to the length of trip, modes of transportation, and short time I've been on supervision. I had to promise to stop at another parole office while there and attend at least one GA meeting at each city we vist (we would do that anyway!). Hoops, but that's okay! Permission granted.

She was not only a great grandma though - she was one heck of a great person!!!