"What do you think happens when we die?" I asked her, as we sat across from each other, playing our third and final hand of solitaire before lunch.
"I don't know" she said. "Nothing?"
‘Nothing' is such a bleak thought. I can't accept that we live all of our years here on earth and when it's all over it is followed by nothing. I asked her if she was afraid of dying and she said no. No? She is 86 and presumably far closer to death than I am, and I am obsessed with dying, like some sort of cliqued Woody Allen character, I lay awake at night and am laser focused on what will happen after I've taken my last breath.
I asked her if she believed in heaven and she said she supposed she did. We talked about what she would want there waiting for her: my grandfather, a gin and tonic, soft shell crabs and dancing were all on the list.
The whole conversation made me want to scream at the top of my lungs. The room smelled of feces as it had for the entire hour I'd been sitting there, despite my two requests to please have someone come in and clean her up. I try to be nice to the nurses because I know their jobs are tough and also, I feel if I'm nice to them then they are nice to her.
I wanted to record her talking about death and family and what she remembers about her life, but I was conflicted. Even if she gave consent, she doesn’t really understand what she’s consenting to. I want to have videos of her to remember her by after she is gone, but the truth is I have a fantastic memory, from what I had for lunch in first grade to what shirt my husband was wearing on our first date. I don’t need a video to remember her voice, especially her voice now, which is often slow and slurring its words.
When she is gone to heaven to dance with my grandpa and golf all day, I will remember her the way she was, driving her cadillac too fast and brushing my hair too hard and giving her unsolicited and often inappropriate opinions to everyone. I will remember her tucking me in at night when I slept over, making me mashed potatoes with the perfect little well of gravy in the middle, holding my hand when we played cards.
I don’t know what I’d hoped she would say to me about death, what possible wisdom I was looking for her to impart to me. I guess I wanted her to tell me to not be afraid, that everything would be okay. I told her I was scared, that the idea that one moment you are alive, and like a light switch that’s been flicked off, everything goes dark and its over. I said all of this to her and she just looked at me and said “Yes, like a light switch.” And smiled. And played her next card. And with that our only talk ever about death was over.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Storms
I checked my email today and was delighted to find something from one of my childhood friends, my neighbor growing up, my first and only babysitter. The daughter of the tall, beautiful woman who paced around nervously on her toes in my parent's tiny summer cabin of a house the day I was born, smack in the middle of March and a blizzard.
Tracy wrote to her sister and me to share her feelings, which like mine tend to skew nostalgic and sentimental, on winter storms. If you grew up where we did, on a private dirt road populated by a handful of families in modest houses situated between two lakes, then you might feel the way we do about storms. Respectful. Worshipful. Loving. We see the value in a good storm.
We each lamented in our own way our inability to recreate this winter wonderland for our children. When we were their ages we were bundled tightly in mismatched outer wear, rarely were we the first one to wear anything, and sent outside to play. Those were truly the only instructions ever given. Go play.
Our kids are spoiled. All of them. We have spoiled them with our best intentions, our fatter wallets, our two parent homes, where both mom and dad are involved in all aspects of their lives.
My friend Tracy wrote about snow days far better than I ever could, with wit and humor my writing often lacks. Find a portion of her email below, I hope she doesn't mind me sharing it:
"These lame snowstorms make me feel like an old man: When I was a kid, we would be lucky if we got a two-hour delay! The buses could barely make it up the hill to get to school and would then slowly slide down that same hill on the way home. And the kids all cheered with joy. And if we did have a snow day, there was no TV watching or iPad playing. No, we would play outside until our Kmart mittens were covered in ice chunks. Our parents didn’t run outside if the triplets hit us in the face with an ice ball - that’s right… not a snow ball, an ice ball. We were left to navigate our sleds down the hill, steeling ourselves to get the winded knocked out of us after attempting to slide through the path of pricker bushes that lead to the steep jump that my older brother had built. And the wind did get knocked out of us and we cheered for joy! Our skin would be cold, wet and red when we got inside, but we didn’t get frostbite, or catch pneumonia. We just drank our watery hot cocoa and cheered for joy. Kids these days."
Tracy wrote to her sister and me to share her feelings, which like mine tend to skew nostalgic and sentimental, on winter storms. If you grew up where we did, on a private dirt road populated by a handful of families in modest houses situated between two lakes, then you might feel the way we do about storms. Respectful. Worshipful. Loving. We see the value in a good storm.
We each lamented in our own way our inability to recreate this winter wonderland for our children. When we were their ages we were bundled tightly in mismatched outer wear, rarely were we the first one to wear anything, and sent outside to play. Those were truly the only instructions ever given. Go play.
Our kids are spoiled. All of them. We have spoiled them with our best intentions, our fatter wallets, our two parent homes, where both mom and dad are involved in all aspects of their lives.
My friend Tracy wrote about snow days far better than I ever could, with wit and humor my writing often lacks. Find a portion of her email below, I hope she doesn't mind me sharing it:
"These lame snowstorms make me feel like an old man: When I was a kid, we would be lucky if we got a two-hour delay! The buses could barely make it up the hill to get to school and would then slowly slide down that same hill on the way home. And the kids all cheered with joy. And if we did have a snow day, there was no TV watching or iPad playing. No, we would play outside until our Kmart mittens were covered in ice chunks. Our parents didn’t run outside if the triplets hit us in the face with an ice ball - that’s right… not a snow ball, an ice ball. We were left to navigate our sleds down the hill, steeling ourselves to get the winded knocked out of us after attempting to slide through the path of pricker bushes that lead to the steep jump that my older brother had built. And the wind did get knocked out of us and we cheered for joy! Our skin would be cold, wet and red when we got inside, but we didn’t get frostbite, or catch pneumonia. We just drank our watery hot cocoa and cheered for joy. Kids these days."
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Watercolors
Visiting my grandmother a few days ago I was struck by how much has been taken from her. Her possessions, her home, her dignity. This was a particularly good visit, certainly the best in the past six months. It was just her and I for two hours in her room, filling in her new calendar with family birthday, playing cards and laughing. It feels so good to laugh with her.
I noticed on this visit how few things she has and how the ones she has are mostly junk. For at least the past twenty years she's been giving away her possessions. Her Hummels, her good (okay decent) china, her christmas ornaments (that ceramic tree that lights up was always my favorite). You'd go to visit her at her apartment and leave with a crock pot and a Danielle Steele novel, a roasting pan and a set of golf clubs. She especially liked to give you back gifts you'd given her. I never read into it too deeply. Now it seems this, and many strange behaviors, were signs of dementia creeping in.
When I looked around her room I made mental notes of what she had: an old card (maybe from Easter), a cheap fleece blanket, some framed photos, a pile of tattered magazines, a stack of two dozen plastic cups that she saves from when she's brought her pills. Looking at everything made me feel slightly ill, almost anxious. Her existence has become so small that she operates the same way a homeless person would, just collecting and keeping little scraps of this and that.
In many ways she is like a homeless person. Displaced, both physically and mentally from what she once had and knew. I told my mother that my grandma is now like a watercolor painting, everything soft and muted and so very vague, no sharpness or definition. And yet still so much beauty.
I noticed on this visit how few things she has and how the ones she has are mostly junk. For at least the past twenty years she's been giving away her possessions. Her Hummels, her good (okay decent) china, her christmas ornaments (that ceramic tree that lights up was always my favorite). You'd go to visit her at her apartment and leave with a crock pot and a Danielle Steele novel, a roasting pan and a set of golf clubs. She especially liked to give you back gifts you'd given her. I never read into it too deeply. Now it seems this, and many strange behaviors, were signs of dementia creeping in.
When I looked around her room I made mental notes of what she had: an old card (maybe from Easter), a cheap fleece blanket, some framed photos, a pile of tattered magazines, a stack of two dozen plastic cups that she saves from when she's brought her pills. Looking at everything made me feel slightly ill, almost anxious. Her existence has become so small that she operates the same way a homeless person would, just collecting and keeping little scraps of this and that.
In many ways she is like a homeless person. Displaced, both physically and mentally from what she once had and knew. I told my mother that my grandma is now like a watercolor painting, everything soft and muted and so very vague, no sharpness or definition. And yet still so much beauty.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
She would have laughed
I have avoided writing about my grandmother lately, feeling I have nothing left to say on the subject. Once every fourteen days I see her. For an hour or two I sit across from her and force conversation and speak louder than is normal and keep a cheerful tone. I watch her eat food she isn't even tasting. We talk about things that aren't really happening and don't talk about things that are.
I feel like there's nothing left of her, of the person she once was. I tell myself she still knows who we are, even if peripherally, and that is positive. She plays solitaire on a little table in her room with a deck of cards that is missing a few, a joke hidden in there I see and choose to smile at. She would have, the old her, the sharp her who would not recognize herself today. She would have laughed at the joke.
I feel like there's nothing left of her, of the person she once was. I tell myself she still knows who we are, even if peripherally, and that is positive. She plays solitaire on a little table in her room with a deck of cards that is missing a few, a joke hidden in there I see and choose to smile at. She would have, the old her, the sharp her who would not recognize herself today. She would have laughed at the joke.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Goodbye Gus
Yesterday I learned that someone I knew not very well but always liked very much had died. I found myself sadder than one should be over the death of someone they did not know intimately, was neither a family member nor a close friend to and I thought about why this was. He, like me, was a restaurant owner and he lived it in every breath he took. Watching him greet his regulars, embrace them like family, remember their orders....it was a thing of beauty.
I think the truth of it is I see myself and my husband and my grandmother in his story. I am reminded that my grandmother will likely soon die, that one day the restaurants my husband and I own will be closed, meals there eaten by those that came faithfully to our counters but a memory. I am reminded of the impermanence of everything.
Life has a way of marching on, through death and illness and the little silly stuff in life that seems so big and is always quickly forgotten. The passing of Gus reminds me of what I want my life to be, the imprint I want to make while I am here. The very best part of owning restaurants is being allowed to be a part of other people's lives, the special moments and the ordinary ones. Looking back on one’s life, I think the ordinary moments become the special ones. Like all the mornings I spent at that diner that Gus' family had since the beginning of time, often hungover, eating eggs and drinking coffee and planning ways to make my life better, those ordinary moments have become special to me. Rest in peace dear Gus.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Carmela
I don't embrace her the same way I used to, a fact that causes me shame. As a child I was like a lap cat with my grandmother. When I got too big to sit in her lap I'd settle for sitting on the floor and resting my head in her lap or sitting next to her and holding her hand. Now when I go to see her, I kiss her on her forehead, not on her cheek or on the lips. I hug her, but awkwardly so because of her wheelchair.
Many memories I have are associated with smell, the smells of pies baking and leaves burning and coffee brewing early in the morning. My grandmother smells like a stranger to me. Her skin feels differently, her hair is almost always unbrushed.
There is a sweet little old lady named Carmela at the nursing home who always says hello to me when I come. She likes my kids and they like her. I overheard her telling someone today that I was Josephine's granddaughter. "She comes all the time and has a lot of children" is how she described me. It made me smile. I often look at her enviously, wishing my grandma could be more like her. She is so kind, 90 years old and very with it, chatting and smiling in her neat little cardigan, not cheap with a smile or a wave.
My grandmother is cranky and anti-social and always remembering less. She yelled at me today to not bring my son (who I had left at home) until I brushed his hair. She obsessed with everyones hair. Mine is always too long and usually the wrong color for her. My kids act like I'm trying to kill them when I try and run a comb through their hair, so that's a fight I save for school days.
I left today's visit feeling a twinge of guilt, feeling like I'd rushed through my visit, just kind of went through the motions. I was finding it hard to carry both ends of the conversation, which is usually the case. She was never really like kind old Carmela with a heart open to everyone. She was more guarded. A tougher nut to crack. But with her and I it was always different, so easy. We have always been like two old friends that could pick up where the other one left off, sharing meals and jokes and the love of "The Golden Girls". Sitting with her today, I wanted her to pick up where I left off, but those days are long gone.
Many memories I have are associated with smell, the smells of pies baking and leaves burning and coffee brewing early in the morning. My grandmother smells like a stranger to me. Her skin feels differently, her hair is almost always unbrushed.
There is a sweet little old lady named Carmela at the nursing home who always says hello to me when I come. She likes my kids and they like her. I overheard her telling someone today that I was Josephine's granddaughter. "She comes all the time and has a lot of children" is how she described me. It made me smile. I often look at her enviously, wishing my grandma could be more like her. She is so kind, 90 years old and very with it, chatting and smiling in her neat little cardigan, not cheap with a smile or a wave.
My grandmother is cranky and anti-social and always remembering less. She yelled at me today to not bring my son (who I had left at home) until I brushed his hair. She obsessed with everyones hair. Mine is always too long and usually the wrong color for her. My kids act like I'm trying to kill them when I try and run a comb through their hair, so that's a fight I save for school days.
I left today's visit feeling a twinge of guilt, feeling like I'd rushed through my visit, just kind of went through the motions. I was finding it hard to carry both ends of the conversation, which is usually the case. She was never really like kind old Carmela with a heart open to everyone. She was more guarded. A tougher nut to crack. But with her and I it was always different, so easy. We have always been like two old friends that could pick up where the other one left off, sharing meals and jokes and the love of "The Golden Girls". Sitting with her today, I wanted her to pick up where I left off, but those days are long gone.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Hello Stranger
She sits in her chair staring out the window, back to the door, hunched forward. I find her this way every time I visit. The nurse I pass in the hall advises me that she is "feeling blue". My mother and I wait in the doorway and send in my son first, holding her cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, and watch as he runs to her and she turns and smiles at him. While all of the dots have stopped connecting for her, she knows she's happy to see him. She knows he is the same little boy she has pictures of on her windowsill. She does not remember his name.
This visit marked a significant decline in my grandmother. While what happened yesterday or five years ago has been out of her mental grasp for sometime, she has also begun to forget the past almost completely. She turned to my mother and said "My husband has passed away, right?" We both remained straight faced and my mother said yes, in 1991. She did not remember the details of his open heart surgery in 1976, or our time spent at Bakers Acres campground with the Schernes and the Ingrams. These are all things that, very recently, we were able to talk about.
Physically she did not seem great either, her ankles were very swollen and when we suggested she might need to be cleaned up before we took her upstairs, she was adamant that she did not, despite the fact that our noses told us other wise. I looked in her drawers (something that still feels strange, just going through her things) for a brush to tidy up her hair and when I couldn't locate one she informed me that people were stealing her things. They have long arms around here she announced. I told her I'd buy here a new one but that didn't seem to make her very happy.
Alzheimer's is so very cruel, it takes and takes until there's nothing left. I worry about what it will look like for her at the end, will she die before she forgets everything? Will she know who I am at the end? She is increasingly a stranger to me that I treat with love and kindness, but have a hard time finding things to talk with her about. I love her just the same, but I ache to have the old her back.
This visit marked a significant decline in my grandmother. While what happened yesterday or five years ago has been out of her mental grasp for sometime, she has also begun to forget the past almost completely. She turned to my mother and said "My husband has passed away, right?" We both remained straight faced and my mother said yes, in 1991. She did not remember the details of his open heart surgery in 1976, or our time spent at Bakers Acres campground with the Schernes and the Ingrams. These are all things that, very recently, we were able to talk about.
Physically she did not seem great either, her ankles were very swollen and when we suggested she might need to be cleaned up before we took her upstairs, she was adamant that she did not, despite the fact that our noses told us other wise. I looked in her drawers (something that still feels strange, just going through her things) for a brush to tidy up her hair and when I couldn't locate one she informed me that people were stealing her things. They have long arms around here she announced. I told her I'd buy here a new one but that didn't seem to make her very happy.
Alzheimer's is so very cruel, it takes and takes until there's nothing left. I worry about what it will look like for her at the end, will she die before she forgets everything? Will she know who I am at the end? She is increasingly a stranger to me that I treat with love and kindness, but have a hard time finding things to talk with her about. I love her just the same, but I ache to have the old her back.
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