aubreym: Ocean beach at sunset (Default)
aubreym ([personal profile] aubreym) wrote2007-12-03 11:28 pm
Entry tags:

Grandparents

Today I’m tired and blue. So far even puppies and ice cream haven’t helped much. I’m adding a couple of episodes of ‘Home Improvement’ to the mix and hoping that will give me a bit of a giggle. I recently started TiVoing re-runs; I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Part of it is because I’m from Michigan, so it feels like home… but most of it is that Dad always compared himself to Tim Taylor. He wasn’t quite as accident-prone as Tim, but it was close. And he had the same sort of man-thing going on. Whatever the reason, I can relate and somehow the silliness of Tim’s accidents and over-the-top density make me laugh, rather than cringe. Unusual, since I’m not often into the slapstick thing. The other night there was an episode where Tim was supposed to be working on his book, but he was procrastinating and having writer’s block. So he daydreamed about the book signing and cleaned the house… I could definitely relate. And he made the frustration much funnier than it is to be in the middle of it.

 

Mom’s on her way to town. She’s going to stop through briefly on her way to Michigan. She’s really worried that Grandma’s not even going to make it until Christmas. She’s feeling like things are progressing more quickly than we’d imagined. Quin is going to be flying out on Wednesday and staying through the weekend. I’m still not sure what I want to do. I’m completely torn, and wishing that someone had already invented transporter technology. On the one hand, I’d like to go to Michigan so I could tell Grandma goodbye in person. So I could spend time with her, just being together. But there’s a big part of me that wants to be close to home, and nesting. I know it would be safe for both me and the baby to travel. The doctor said it’s fine to fly up until 36 weeks (and I’m just closing on 32). All I would need to do is get up and walk every now and again. Not so easy, considering the size of the aisles and the size of my body… but not that difficult either. (We’ll just ignore how many times I’ve run into things with my belly because I’m not used to having quite such a bump out front.) And Grandma’s really worried about me flying. She’s said over and over that she’d prefer me not to come out, just because something *could* happen to me or the baby. I’m completely torn.

I talked on the phone with her for a little bit last night. She’s not sounding that well. In a conversation that lasted just a little bit over 20 minutes, she had to stop twice to breathe. And she kept coughing. She’s having a hard time getting around the condo, even with oxygen. And she’s having trouble taking a shower. She’s thinking she’s going to have to stick to baths. Aunt Chris is contacting hospice. And I was just out there visiting a month ago. At that point she was almost perfectly normal. She coughed a tiny bit. She was a little short of breath while we were walking around the mall… but nothing like now. I really hate it.

But we did have a good conversation. I told her how much I love her, how much I’ll miss her, and how lucky I feel that I got to spend so much time with her while I was growing up. She said that even if she did think Mom and Dad shouldn’t marry, the good thing about it was that they had me (and Quin). She said she and Grandpa had wanted to have three kids, but couldn’t… and then God brought me along while they were still young. That I am like that third child. I can’t believe I’m losing my last Grandma. My young Grandma. The one I felt closest to, even if we did have our strained times. She said she didn’t mind so much when Quin and I gave them a hard time, because she knew it meant we felt comfortable enough with them and our relationship to do that. We could be brats.

I’m really lucky that I got to know both sets of my grandparents. I’ve always felt like my dad’s parents were the more ‘typical’ grandparents. Grandpa H did woodworking and fixed cars and taught me how to play checkers. Grandma H cooked my favorite dinners, always had fresh cookies, sewed me clothes, and taught me to play Uno. We had a special game we created called ‘write notes’, where we would pretend to be someone else (often fictional characters) and write short notes to each other in that persona. (My first foray into fanfiction.) My mom’s parents were the ‘young’ grandparents. Grandpa T horsed around with me and Quin. We spent many hours getting chased through the yard. And when he mowed their huge lawn, we got rides on the mower (unless we hid behind bushes and ambushed him with squirt-guns). He also gave me sips of peach schnapps to help me sleep when I had insomnia. And when we played pingpong in the basement, he’d make gagging noises when the ball got stuck in spiderwebs and dead bugs. Grandma T was there when I was having a hard time going to school in 5th grade. I could call her in the morning and she’d talk me through my anxiety. She put my hair in pin-curls. She played school with me and brought out her old dollies and an old toy kitchen set. She took me swimming in the summer. And she visited me when I went away to summer camp, and then again when I was in college. She’s the one I forced to listen to whatever band I loved at the moment (Bon Jovi, Poison, Pearl Jam…).

And she’s the one I worry most about being like. Her whole life became very small, caught up in OCD. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t go out and do things. And she has spent a lot of time wishing she’d been able to do more during her life (go to college, travel, read.) She can’t see the choices she made, and she can’t see how she could have done things differently. All part of her illness. I see some of the same tendencies in myself - to keep myself in a safe, little box that becomes more and more constrictive, even while it is ’safe’. Some of the tension I’ve felt with her has been my own need to distance - hoping that I can keep myself from following in her footsteps.

But she has a family that she loves, and that loves her as well. She married the man she loved and had many long years with him. She did get to travel while she was young and he was in the army, and then again when I was a baby. There are worse ways to live. Talking to her last night, she spoke about the good things in her life, and the richness she had. And she talked about her hope for what the afterlife will be like.

Words can’t express how much I’m going to miss her. And in some ways, how much I already do.

 


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