I mentioned going to Southern California to see my grandmother a couple of months ago. Since then, she relocated to a Catholic assisted living/nursing facility, where she became the roommate of a hundred-year-old Irish nun who, quite properly, restored the "Mary" to my grandmother's name (she hasn't used the "Mary" regularly since she was at school being taught by Irish nuns herself, seventy years ago and more.)
My grandmother is a tough lady, with a will of steel. Since moving into "Bethlehem House", she has claimed to be a vegetarian (she's not, but they stopped trying to make her eat the chicken broth), tried to bail out of her wheelchair to go exploring...oh, you name it, she's made life a little more interesting for them. Mr. Bluejeans made friends with the nurses in his broken Russian.
He got a call yesterday that she's not doing well, and that he should go down now. So that's where he is. We're now at the point where we're talking openly about funeral plans (we should only be made to look like fools for this), and the sacrament one of my students once called 'annoying of the sick' has been given.
I am sad. I'm worried about my father and his sister. My grandmother is apparently being made as comfortable as she can be, they have someone holding her hand and talking to her. She is being taken care of in this world, and she will be taken care of in the next. The rest of us I don't know about.
And I come home to find my wedding invitations have been delivered.
I wish I could express the full scope and humor and grace of my grandmother on this blog. She should have a movie about her in which Lucille Ball plays a sort of Zorro-esque character who travels the world in a motor home, finding the oppressed and standing up for them. I got lucky in grandmothers. So incredibly lucky.
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