My family and I are asking for financial help with the burial and funeral of my dear grandmother Brenda Gunter. Everyone knows her as Nanny. She will be succeeded by two children, my mother Susan Love and her brother Robbie Gunter. My Nanny has 3 grandkids and she is about to be a great grandmother to 10, my sister Hailey Gibson has 7. I have two boys and I’ll be having a babygirl in the beginning of July she unfortunately will not be here to meet. She is much more than just a grandma to us and was much more than just our grandmother, every single person who stepped into our home could call her and count on her to be a nanny to them too. She is the most selfless, fierce, and resilient woman I have ever known. I would not be who I am as a person or as a mother if it was not for her. She taught me everything I know from how to read to how to cook. She’s been the solid foundation and rock to our family. She has been mine, my mother’s, and my sister’s best friend for our entire lives. My nanny has always lived with us or we’ve always lived with her, the 4 generation of women that we are have never been without each other no matter how much we butt heads.
This is going to be incredibly hard on us and our children but especially my mother, my nanny is all she has left besides us because we lost my father when I was in elementary school. We were not mentally, emotionally, or financially prepared for this loss to come. We truly thought we had more time. My sister recently went through financial hardship due to other family related issues and my husband and I have been preparing for this baby while trying to save for maternity leave because it will be unpaid leave. We have bills to pay, we are busting our butts trying to get through life because unfortunately it’s going to carry on without her here with us and we have to keep moving for the sake of our kids. My husband is putting himself through school during the day for his CDL and we both work at night until I have my C-section in July. I have high blood pressure and gestational diabetes during this pregnancy so my Drs. aren’t going to let me go to my due date but I am going to work until I can’t anymore. We are trying to put everything we can together to give her a proper burial but will still come up short. Bills, tuition, unpaid maternity leave now on top of a funeral and burial, we can’t do it all alone. No 23 year old would be able to. We have no one else. My mom has been doing this by her self since the beginning. Everything feels so heavy right now like we have the weight of the world on our shoulders. My grandma has given and sacrificed so much for us throughout our lives, I can only hope we can give some of that back to her now.
My nanny as long as I can remember has had COPD but in recent years she’s been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and dementia that has only gotten worse over time and with age. As my Nanny’s dementia progressed, my mom put her entire life on hold and stopped working to stay home and be a full time caretaker for my grandma. In the past two years she’s fallen and had partial hip replacement surgery and a heart attack. She has slowly lost her mobility and became bedridden over the last year and a half. Her condition worsened in the last two weeks and on Sunday night she was rushed to the hospital due to low levels of oxygen and come to find she has pneumonia. She has gone through a round of antibiotics and they have taken her off of all other medication. She went from having 5 liters of oxygen per minute at home to now 47 liters per minute at the hospital. The amount of extreme oxygen she’s had to be given is causing complications and she is in pain. She is not able to eat without the chance of choking and they won’t give her a feeding tube. The Dr. advised us two days ago to give her a couple days to see if she improved and if not for us to move forward with comfort care which will start tomorrow. She could pass at anytime, it’s really in Gods hands now. It won’t be long and she will be with Jesus. She has her parents, my dad, a sister, and a brother waiting on her and I know it will be a very beautiful and long awaited reunion. I can make peace with that, I just can’t make peace with seeing her suffer any longer or failing her by not giving her the burial I know she should have.
My nanny does not have life insurance and we didn’t have anything in place and prepared for her. The last few years have been more than tough on our family. My mom has shouldered it all by taking care of her on her own these past 5 years. She hasn’t been able to save because she couldn’t work. My nanny never wanted to be in a nursing home and we’ve honored her wishes up to her last moments. I want my mother to have peace knowing she can give her mom the burial and funeral she deserves to have. This shouldn’t all be my mother’s burden to bear after everything she’s already been through taking care of my grandmother.
If anyone can donate anything or has any contact information for resources to help people in situations like ours we greatly appreciate any and everything. If nothing else, please pray for guidance and peace over our family during this time. This is such a hard thing to accept.