It has been a year and a day since my mother's mother died. My grandmother. A woman my grandfather, her husband, first described as "a real peach". Last summer I was tortured by a combination of factors. And I wrote about my grandmother. This is part of what I wrote.
In the evenings, she would grow lonely and restless. She called out to anyone; demanding they come to see her right then. Right at that moment. She could feel an otherness creeping upon her as the sun began to go down. In the long afternoon hours, her Sunday afternoon feeling swelled and morphed. She became not herself. Whatever relative that happened to be on hand, that had answered her desperate call, was likely to be met with anger and frustration when they informed her that they were not there to take her home. Why would you come here and not take me home? Why do you always leave me here? In a room that is never warm enough. Where you have to push a button to use the bathroom, wait until the urge has passed and the aide instead has to get you a fresh pair of Wal-Mart brand Depends.
Family came to her in the hospital. To sit with her and to hold her hand. She leans over and asks if they are here to say goodbye. She asks if she can let go; it hurts; it hurts. It is difficult to hang on with oxygen flowing into lungs clogged with pneumonia, into a brain scarred with strokes and Parkinson’s. Each morning, the doctor arrives earlier and earlier so as to avoid the family, in particular the eldest of the two daughters. She accosted him last week, demanding to know why there were no answers, why nothing was happening. Why every time that she asked about something, all he said was that she was holding on. Was she to let go? How do you let go?
Her face and hands and hair were made beautiful in death. Before, after weeks in the hospital, months in the care center and years helping on the farm before SPF 50 and wrinkle reducing moisturizer, her hands were rough and mottled black and blue from too many sticks of the IV. Her smile sagged on one side from any number of strokes and mini-strokes. Weight was lost and then gained, cheeks and jowls sagged. Eyes were puffy from too much sleep. Hours had been spent putting in rollers at home and going to the local salon for a permanent. In the hospital, it hung straight – washed on a semi-regular basis with a shower cap placed upon her head, massaged, let to set, then removed. Another item on a to-do list of a nurse or an aide.
The doctors didn’t seem to visit much. First do no harm. There was no harm that could be done, nor any good, except for the morphine drip that increased at night when legs got restless and the mind couldn’t sleep, as it searched for the reason for holding on, for the reason that it hurt, that the last days were so unbearable. A woman who had spent her life serving others. No saint, surely, but saintly in the way of a farmer’s wife and a teacher and a mother. A quick end, a smooth end would have been deserving.
She waited. She waited until the wheat was cut. She waited until her youngest daughter had said good night. She waited until her husband was at home, sleeping in the bed they had shared. 3:00am in the morning, the quiet hour, the night before the dawn, she let go.
Her obituary fits neatly on a page. Listing those alive and those who passed before her with a summary of her hobbies. My cousin and I called her Magic Fingers as she taught as how to sew; we couldn’t fathom how fingers could make such small and even stitches as our stitches wavered across the fabric. Nora enjoyed sewing. She made outfits for five children, including underwear out of feed sacks. My mother didn’t get her first store bought dress until she was 18. She made outfits and quilts for all of her grandchildren. Do some anecdotes, some personal touches bring her any closer? Do they do any more then Nora enjoyed sewing?
When asked by the pastor for memories of their mother, her children sat silently at the table. My own mother decided, in an oddly obstinate way, that she would not say a word. She was not going to help him. She would sit there in silence and let someone else talk. My aunt, a daughter-in-law named Eileen, chimes in. Eileen and her husband who found it so difficult to get off the farm to come to Christmas celebrations even when they were only a 30 minute drive away. This is the woman who has all the memories. This is the woman who decides how my grandmother will be remembered in the pastor’s sermon.
She filled a silence, though, she filled a void that wouldn’t be filled with the ponderous, slow to speak and not ever quite able to deal with emotions children. The gap had to be filled and she did her best. More than the other daughter-in-law who began to lecture, a few days before Nora let go, my mother and her sister on the care that should have been given. Living only an hour away, as compared to the 3+ hours of all the other family members aside from Eileen, she came only at the end. She voiced her opinion only at the end when there was nothing that could be done. When her opinion was simply filling another kind of void, that space of time as they waited to see how long Nora would hold on. The space the doctor kept calling Nora’s balance beam that was narrowing by the day.
This was the daughter-in-law who practiced medicine and her husband who did the same; let’s call them Mae and Paul. Mae and Paul came on their own convenience, squeezed in between trips to Milan, Israel, China, England, New York City and San Fransisco.
They were not there to hold her hand as she called for help and asked if she had to keep holding on. They did not feed her the mashed up food the care center fed her near the end. They did not wash her hair, put on her socks, brush her hair back from her forehead, hold a cold cloth to her lip that she bit so hard in pain or with the shudders and twitches of Parkinson's she had to have stitches.
They come in as time has run out. As their opinions cannot be acted upon. As though they had all the answers and if they’d had their way, she would be fine. An unconscious presumption or unknown guilt, for whatever reason, she spent hours detailing to Miriam just how Nora’s care should have been administered. Who does that help? How does that help?
I wonder at the tale of the prodigal son. Did not the first-born son have a right to be just a wee bit annoyed? Here comes his brother, welcomed back in without a second thought. Are we expected to be so forgiving? As we forgive, we let go of that small self-satisfaction, that conviction that we are somehow, in whatever small way, better than these others. I sent letters and flowers and I held her hand; a cautious, selfish and guilty whisper inside me tells me that this makes me better than those who came only to say goodbye. If I forgive them, I am no better than them. It is good that the Word can be seen like poetry – metaphors and symbolism, able to be interpreted.
88 years of life can fit neatly onto a page and even more neatly onto a grey granite headstone. A list of her children’s names. Her husband’s name alongside hers. No extra decoration, no frills and elaboration.
I volunteer for a website that reviews books and music. I moved from simply reviewing items to be a part of requesting the items. During the schoolyear, as I'm teaching, I didn't really make time for it and I thought that now that it was summer, I'd make more requests. And so I sent off my requests, and now I've been told off for not doing things properly.
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