No Room for Us in the Inn

I haven’t been consistently making entries everyday because my grandmother passed away. She lived in western Pennsylvania in the small town of Martinsburg. My grandfather passed away 10 years earlier of a sudden and completely unexpected heart attack.

Grandma had open heart surgery two weeks ago on a Monday, and showed signs of a speedy recovery. But as the week progressed her health began to decline until that Friday when she had a stroke. Doctors spent the whole next week trying to save her, but her organs continued to shut down. Finally, they carried out her living will and took her off of life support on Saturday.

As if the viewing and funeral aren’t hard enough, we had a little trouble with our accommodations for the night in between. We were supposed to stay at my uncle’s cabin, but we couldn’t get up the steep drive due to ice. We tried numerous times, and even the tire-chains didn’t help. Finally we resorted to finding a hotel, so we drove an hour to the closest one that Google knew about. They were booked, and so were three others that we tried.

We spent about three hours looking for a place to stay, and my patience was wearing thin, but I’m now cozied up in a Ramada double bed with my MacBook. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Mary and Joseph to end their hotel search in a barn.