A month into quarantine has passed and it was now the week of April 20th. My grandma was acting differently for a little while now, she began taking naps a lot and was not seeming  like herself. She went to the hospital and was then diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. This came as a huge shock to my family and everyone who knew her, for she was 91 and throughout her whole life she was the healthiest person in the world, after all her mother lived to be 99, and she was the youngest of her six siblings, all ranging from ages 93-99…. good genes, huh!

After we found out she had this disease, she was given the option to be in and out of the hospital taking chemo, during COVID, which would weaken her, or she could spend the rest of her time surrounded by the people she loves most every day. She chose to spend her last couple of weeks with her family, and that was the best decision in the world. She came home on Monday, April 27th. From that day forward not a day went by where her whole family wasn’t by her side.

She had two children, my grandma Linda Rotz (Jerry), and David Domenick (Rosa). Six grandchildren, Andrea (Jay), Melissa (Aaron), Jerry (Connie), David Jr. (Jaclene), Brandon, and Angelina. Along with her six grandchildren, she had four great-grandchildren, Gabrielle, Isabella, Madison, and Maci.

Once we all found out she had not much longer, we decided to begin to quarantine together. We all came together, had family dinner every day for twenty-one days, we sat and told stories, went through pictures, had sleepovers, overall had the best time. All she ever wanted was for the whole family to be together, there were very limited times where the whole family was together due to people being at work, school, etc. Due to COVID-19, nobody worked or had school, so everyone was able to be there practically 24/7.

My favorite part of being there that last month was when the whole family would be laughing and talking loud like Italians do, and she would just look around and take it all in, she loved it. In the mornings we would spoil her with her favorites, in the afternoons, we would sit and watch The Match Game. The nights were the best times, that’s when everyone came over and we ate tons of food and laughed like crazy. Despite everyone’s heartbreak during these few weeks, we smiled through the pain, not for ourselves but for her. She was seriously the greatest woman in the world, there was and will never be anyone like her our Grandma Irma.

On May 18th, she passed surrounded by all the people she loved.

 At the end of the day, this is a rough time to be going through but in order to get through this, you have to be optimistic about the future. Without COVID happening, there would’ve been limited time being with her, therefore due to COVID we got to make the best memories by surrounding her with the people she loved, making her last month on Earth the most memorable.

  In loving memory of Irma Domenick<3