It turns out that we lost her Friday night, around the same time I was blogging, I suppose.
With apologies to the blogosphere, I don't want to get too deeply into what I'm feeling and what the family is up to, at least right now. I just wanted you to know. Which may be insane, but I know that this kind of thing matters to me when I read other people's blogs--anyway.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
I Love Lucy Saves The World
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Dancing At My Wedding
I was bat mitzvah in 1986, and my grandparents--both my grandmothers and my grandpa--came to the ceremony and the party, and they were all in their sixties, and they drove themselves, and they danced. My Catholic grandma accidentally genuflected while she was getting into her seat. (This embarassed her no end, as she was convinced the rabbi would be mortally offended, but the faux pas, if faux pas it was, was wiped out a second later, as my Aunt Yocheved announced at top volume "My! What a YOUNG rabbi!")
Twenty years later, we're going back for my wedding, and my grandparents aren't in their sixties any more. (I guess I thought they'd be spry and salt-and-pepper forever.) My grandpa died three years ago. My mother's mother suffered a stroke not long after that, and is in a long, slow recovery, thank God. My father's mother is fragile, and had been increasingly suffering from dementia.
Late last week we got a series of calls that seemed to indicate that things were really wrong with my dad's mother. She called in hysterics saying that my aunt and uncle, who she lives with, had kidnapped her, and asking my father to send the San Francisco PD to save her. (They live in San Diego. In the background of her SOS call, the kidnappers could be heard offering cardigans, and asking if she wanted to sit down somewhere more comfortable with the phone). Shortly after, we got news that her doctor has found a number of almost-certainly-cancerous growths in several places, and that the dementia was kicking up. My aunt told us that if we wanted to see her, we had better come quickly.
My father and I took off, and spent the weekend and most of Monday in San Diego. We're going to go back over Mother's Day weekend.
I'm really glad that we went. She actually was doing better by the time we got there, and we talked for quite a long time. She's frail, tiny--she's never liked to eat, and has always been slight, and now she's like a little bird. Ankles I could put my fist around. And her short-term memory is shot, and her long-term memory fades in and out randomly, and sometimes when we're talking I'm me, and sometimes I'm my mother, and sometimes I'm a total stranger and she looks confused when people call me by my name, because it was also her mother's name. But her sense of herself is still strong, and her unmistakable personality is intact. And I'm dealing.
"We can't plan as far ahead as August," my uncle told me. "We're living day to day right now." "Look," I told him. "If she's well enough to travel in August, and wants to come, it will be a huge blessing, and if not, we'll still be all right." And I told my aunt on the other side of the family something similar when I wrote about the wedding. My mother's mother is going in for cataract surgery and is still fragile. I don't know if travel is in the cards. But I'm dealing. My three grandparents between them have given me so much. I would love for them to dance at my wedding, or at least be there. (And typing this is making me cry.) But we'll have to see, and I will have them all in my heart, (and the grandmas on the phone), if that's what we can manage.
Twenty years later, we're going back for my wedding, and my grandparents aren't in their sixties any more. (I guess I thought they'd be spry and salt-and-pepper forever.) My grandpa died three years ago. My mother's mother suffered a stroke not long after that, and is in a long, slow recovery, thank God. My father's mother is fragile, and had been increasingly suffering from dementia.
Late last week we got a series of calls that seemed to indicate that things were really wrong with my dad's mother. She called in hysterics saying that my aunt and uncle, who she lives with, had kidnapped her, and asking my father to send the San Francisco PD to save her. (They live in San Diego. In the background of her SOS call, the kidnappers could be heard offering cardigans, and asking if she wanted to sit down somewhere more comfortable with the phone). Shortly after, we got news that her doctor has found a number of almost-certainly-cancerous growths in several places, and that the dementia was kicking up. My aunt told us that if we wanted to see her, we had better come quickly.
My father and I took off, and spent the weekend and most of Monday in San Diego. We're going to go back over Mother's Day weekend.
I'm really glad that we went. She actually was doing better by the time we got there, and we talked for quite a long time. She's frail, tiny--she's never liked to eat, and has always been slight, and now she's like a little bird. Ankles I could put my fist around. And her short-term memory is shot, and her long-term memory fades in and out randomly, and sometimes when we're talking I'm me, and sometimes I'm my mother, and sometimes I'm a total stranger and she looks confused when people call me by my name, because it was also her mother's name. But her sense of herself is still strong, and her unmistakable personality is intact. And I'm dealing.
"We can't plan as far ahead as August," my uncle told me. "We're living day to day right now." "Look," I told him. "If she's well enough to travel in August, and wants to come, it will be a huge blessing, and if not, we'll still be all right." And I told my aunt on the other side of the family something similar when I wrote about the wedding. My mother's mother is going in for cataract surgery and is still fragile. I don't know if travel is in the cards. But I'm dealing. My three grandparents between them have given me so much. I would love for them to dance at my wedding, or at least be there. (And typing this is making me cry.) But we'll have to see, and I will have them all in my heart, (and the grandmas on the phone), if that's what we can manage.
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