Beautiful piece, this one on Gram...
A favorite grandmother has died. Prosaic, ordinary, everyday kind of stuff -- except when it involves a grandmother you know and it happens before you're ready to let go.
This particular grandmother was not mine, but my children's. In four months she went from managing her own home and dancing at a grandson's wedding, to being tethered to oxygen, to slipping away with startling efficiency.
From Thanksgiving through December, the grandkids followed her from hospital to nursing home to ICU and back again. As they prepared to resume their January school routines, they harbored hope for another holiday, another visit home, another shared milestone. For one more Feathery Fudge Cake or signature batch of orange cookies.
When the phone splits the silence at 5:20 a.m., hope follows the tide out. The conversation with her the night before about cleaning the floor mats in her car is instantly a last precious memory, one you'd have done just a little bit differently, if you'd known. But she didn't stay long enough. She didn't linger.
When it's your grandmother (as I remember from 1985), you need for someone to understand, first of all, how wrong it feels to be facing life without her, and later, how deep and surprisingly tenacious the ache that displaces the emptiness.
This time I am a generation removed, a spectator as my kids -- 25, 20, 17 -- navigate the waters of loss.
On the first Friday of the new year, they stood before family and friends in the church where she and they had been baptized, and one after another talked about her importance to them.
"Gram" was the name she chose for herself when the first of them was born. Through four childhoods, she answered to "Gahm," "Grime," "Bang" and an assortment of other mangled articulations.
A homemaker, she lived two blocks away. This made her a regular presence -- a pitstop, a haven, a touchstone. Her house was a place of interesting toys, well-chosen stories, a listening ear, endless patience, laughter, nutritious meals, cookies fresh from the oven, warm Ovaltine. Other things in our kids' lives shifted; Gram did not.
You couldn't help but love such a person and the comfort and cheer she created around her. If I did much right as a parent of small children it was not to get in the way of a good thing. Having an up-the-street Gram hadn't been my experience; I was glad it could be part of theirs and not only for the help I got from the arrangement.
In the days following Gram's death, I began to realize the rarity of quintessential grandmothers in our current culture. Fulltime homemakers are no longer the rule, even among grandmothers. Families are more dispersed. And where grandmothers and grandkids do live close, many families (and many grams) can't manage without the wages these women earn outside the home. The result: perhaps we're all a little poorer.
I don't know what went into Gram's decision to be and remain a homemaker. But I knew her grace and commitment in caring for what was hers -- home, yard, garden, neighbors, children, community, grandkids. She spent resources thoughtfully, coaxing the last bit of use from things without being stingy. She stayed close to her roots, made life better for her family on a daily basis and nurtured the future in prosaic, ordinary, everyday ways.
Because of her, I believe in the possibility of shiny old pots.
Though it was a gentle death at the end of a good, long life and though four "grands" were attentive of her in the midst of their busy and increasingly distant lives, there may be no shortcuts through the grief. This sorrow at separation is the price of loving, of being loved.
It's still a pretty good deal.
By HOLLY HARMAN FACKLER
News Journal
hfackler@nncogannett.com
419-521-7232
A favorite grandmother has died. Prosaic, ordinary, everyday kind of stuff -- except when it involves a grandmother you know and it happens before you're ready to let go.
This particular grandmother was not mine, but my children's. In four months she went from managing her own home and dancing at a grandson's wedding, to being tethered to oxygen, to slipping away with startling efficiency.
From Thanksgiving through December, the grandkids followed her from hospital to nursing home to ICU and back again. As they prepared to resume their January school routines, they harbored hope for another holiday, another visit home, another shared milestone. For one more Feathery Fudge Cake or signature batch of orange cookies.
When the phone splits the silence at 5:20 a.m., hope follows the tide out. The conversation with her the night before about cleaning the floor mats in her car is instantly a last precious memory, one you'd have done just a little bit differently, if you'd known. But she didn't stay long enough. She didn't linger.
When it's your grandmother (as I remember from 1985), you need for someone to understand, first of all, how wrong it feels to be facing life without her, and later, how deep and surprisingly tenacious the ache that displaces the emptiness.
This time I am a generation removed, a spectator as my kids -- 25, 20, 17 -- navigate the waters of loss.
On the first Friday of the new year, they stood before family and friends in the church where she and they had been baptized, and one after another talked about her importance to them.
"Gram" was the name she chose for herself when the first of them was born. Through four childhoods, she answered to "Gahm," "Grime," "Bang" and an assortment of other mangled articulations.
A homemaker, she lived two blocks away. This made her a regular presence -- a pitstop, a haven, a touchstone. Her house was a place of interesting toys, well-chosen stories, a listening ear, endless patience, laughter, nutritious meals, cookies fresh from the oven, warm Ovaltine. Other things in our kids' lives shifted; Gram did not.
You couldn't help but love such a person and the comfort and cheer she created around her. If I did much right as a parent of small children it was not to get in the way of a good thing. Having an up-the-street Gram hadn't been my experience; I was glad it could be part of theirs and not only for the help I got from the arrangement.
In the days following Gram's death, I began to realize the rarity of quintessential grandmothers in our current culture. Fulltime homemakers are no longer the rule, even among grandmothers. Families are more dispersed. And where grandmothers and grandkids do live close, many families (and many grams) can't manage without the wages these women earn outside the home. The result: perhaps we're all a little poorer.
I don't know what went into Gram's decision to be and remain a homemaker. But I knew her grace and commitment in caring for what was hers -- home, yard, garden, neighbors, children, community, grandkids. She spent resources thoughtfully, coaxing the last bit of use from things without being stingy. She stayed close to her roots, made life better for her family on a daily basis and nurtured the future in prosaic, ordinary, everyday ways.
Because of her, I believe in the possibility of shiny old pots.
Though it was a gentle death at the end of a good, long life and though four "grands" were attentive of her in the midst of their busy and increasingly distant lives, there may be no shortcuts through the grief. This sorrow at separation is the price of loving, of being loved.
It's still a pretty good deal.
By HOLLY HARMAN FACKLER
News Journal
hfackler@nncogannett.com
419-521-7232
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