For Grandma
48 hours of reflection & passing
Grandma died Tuesday afternoon. She died peacefully at home, in her bed, hours after returning home, where she hadn’t been in years.
I hugely credit my mother who had the determination and willpower of a small army, for a long time, to get Grandma back home.
Mom is a Pisces. Grandma’s an Aquarius, and I think my mom could feel something, or sense something, that no one else could — completing the dots from here to past the veil, a dying wish, unspoken.
I was sitting at the Silver Lake library, trying to get a break from the heat, about to meet up with a friend who was about to have a baby. Funny how those circles of life and death come to play again and again and again. While I was sitting, getting settled in, thinking about where we might get a beverage and then I got the call and the text.
Two silvery disks dropped from my face onto the blacktop of the back kids’ table at the library. I hadn’t even processed what had happened yet, but my body was already producing water. I dashed out, got into my car, and the waterworks continued to flow. I didn’t really know where I was going or what I was doing.
So I drove around.
Eventually, someone who has also just gone through grief and death called — a happy distraction while I dropped off my film. I thought about all the film pictures I’ve taken with Grandma over the years and started trying to dig them up. It’s my reaction when souls leave this realm.
Here are a few:
I got my film camera 10 years ago in Paris — some random camera repair shop on Rue Monge. I bought it because it reminded me of the golden film camera Grandma used to have, I have a fuzzy memory of her loading the film at Disney World or another similar theme park. Carrying it around gives me a connection to that past.
Elaine had all the qualities of the quintessential grandma. She taught us how to play cards and Rummikub. She played tennis with us. She took care of us whenever my parents were away, and when my mom had breast cancer. We would stay at her house and go to vacation bible school, sleeping in my mom and aunt’s childhood rooms. She lived in her home for over 50 years.
She was stubborn. She was specific. She was consistent. She always sent cards. She was kind and loving, and she saw me through the highs and lows of my youth, my teenage years, my floundering young adulthood. She knows I got married.
She knows that I’m sober. I don’t know if she knows that my sobriety date is her birthday. Her birthday is five days after mine, and I like to think that we got each other on some level because of that.
I don’t know if she’s actually ever been to a spa. I don’t think she ever liked being pampered. But towards the end, she would let me give her massages when I would come to visit.
The last time I saw her was on Valentine’s Day. I had just finished a job in the city, and after seemingly everything that could go wrong — including getting blocked out of my rental car (Zipcar, never again), sitting in the cold sun with Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins, and giving myself a manicure to test out which color I was going to give Grandma.
She let me do her fingernails and picked a light babydoll pink. She was a staunch minimalist. I was shocked when she asked if she could keep the big red box of nail care supplies I toted in. I don’t know if it was to remember me, or to have something beautiful in her room, but I was happy to leave it there alongside some cards my friend Bill and I made.
A practical woman. A Catholic. A Democrat. Mother to five children, 20+ grandkids, and now 2 great grandkids. Widowed for 30+ years. She used her time to travel (she loved a cruise), play cards with her friends, eat pies and sweets, and play tennis until her mobility went downhill. A New Jersey born, Manhattan NYU secretary careered, and finally a Long Island family matron.
All this, and more, has gotten me thinking about care at the end of life, and what the future might look like — in my lifetime — with death spas. Why can’t we have more comfort for the elderly? Wouldn’t they enjoy a soak?
Over the last three years, Grandma broke her hip, signed a DNR, climbed out of and fell from her bed multiple times, and had pneumonia more than once - a cat with nine lives. Most times when I left the care facility I’d grieve a bit, acknowledging it was probably the last time I’d see her. I’d also be confronted with the reality of someone who didn’t want to be alive anymore and had no way to do anything about it in a place that, quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to be in either.
On the drive back to Brooklyn, bits of beauty flickered as I passed the cemeteries.
Tears. Guilt. Remembering. Laughter. Reminiscing. More tears. Cleaning. No dreams.
I scrubbed my fingers raw cleaning my house. Annoyed at the sand on the floor, a water mark on the couch, and the general anxiety of not being home in a long time with random bits of unpacking and fixing to do. I decided to bring my couch cushions to the laundromat at the crack of dawn. Why? It’s hard to say. I had just told a friend no to punish themselves when things, out of their control, spin into situations where things get worse quickly, and there is nothing to do but sit in the feeling and try on acceptance. Was I punishing myself? For not going back to Grandma sooner? For not calling more? As a friend and mentor reminded me after this last stop in Rome, “Life goes by quickly!”
I gave up fighting my frustrations, my inbox, the heat, and drove to the ocean for a salt cleanse, playing in the waves, like Grammy Lamby used to watch me do.
From the vibrations my mother felt in her mother, and my grandmother in her mother. It all starts and ends with water.
xoxo,
coco
Such a sweet post. Truly honored to be a small part 🥹
absolutely beautiful. she is undoubtedly smiling down and finding her place in a sauna right beside you<333