Fern

My last living grandparent is dying.  My father's mother, Fern, has been making her way towards death for several years, but it now looks like, as her bodily functions begin to shut down, she is very close to moving on.  Here are my thoughts (feel free to skip this post; it's sentimental and not at all witty).  Sorry for the past tense; she's still alive, but for some reason it felt right to write about the life she's led in this way.

Fern and I always found something to laugh about.  She always made me feel special.  She wasn't always the easiest person to get along with, but for some reason I was a favored one, and she doted on me.  I don't know what I did to deserve this (probably just dumb luck).

We loved to laugh together.  One time we went on a walk in the evening around her neighborhood and found a big bag of booze in between her and her neighbor's house.  We thought it was the funniest thing, and our little secret.  I remember going clothes shopping with her a few times and just having a ball.

Most of our close relationship has been in the past few years.  There was a challenge at a church activity once to write letters to grandparents, and I actually did it.  I tried to write her every few weeks and managed to actually do it some of the time.  Then she started to call me.  At first I was apprehensive because I remembered long, boring conversations with grandparents as a child.  But she was a hoot to talk to.  She always tried to express to me how much she loved and cared and worried about me.  She was constantly concerned with how I was doing with my kids, and was I staying sane.  She would frequently talk about her own children in their younger years and how different their personalities were but how she loved each of them.

Lots of our conversations were peppered with confusion and repetition, as dementia slowly took over in her brain, and she had a hard time remembering and focusing on the conversation.  But she would often realize that she was not doing so well and just laugh it off, and we would laugh about it together.  She lamented growing old and having her body not work so well and her brain work less well.  You could tell it was frustrating for her.

I called and spoke to her today, knowing it could be an odd conversation.  Here is an email I sent to my dad describing our conversation:

I just talked to Fern on the phone.  She started off pretty lucid.  There was the usual repetition of questions about  my kids and where I live.  I could tell that her speech was slightly slurred, but she was still understandable.  We talked for about ten minutes, and by the last few minutes she was talking about if the operator had given me the number for the hotel they were staying at.  As we said goodbye, she said something to the affect of how they were going to wait for me at the house til I got there.  Lots of jumping between decades and locales, every sentence or two.  There were only a couple of times when I could tell she was saying the totally wrong word from what she meant to say.  Anyway, it's interesting how even through her brain that's shutting down, she was able to say some stuff that showed her true feelings and intentions.  Mostly for my record, here are some things that she said:

"We sure had some good times together.  We sure had some good giggles.  There's nothing that we can't play around with (referring to things we talk about and laugh about).  Other people didn't always have the same sense of humor as we did, but we sure had fun together.  Maybe on the next move our husbands will get moved to the same place so we can see each other more often."

I think that I will try calling her again in a few days; although it makes for a kind of frustrating conversation, her heart and personality are still there, and I want to soak that up as much as I can.

After talking to her, I got off the phone and went to get my four year old from his bedroom where he was resting.  As I looked at him I couldn't help but feel the weight of how time continues and the old die and new life grows.  There was such a stark contrast between Fern and little Jack, and yet they are both so full of life. I'm fairly certain that I'll never see Fern again while she's living, but I can feel how her spirit has blessed my life and how it will continue to linger in my heart as I raise my boys.  New life comes and old life goes, but the continuity of our eternal lives is ever present.  It is a holy thing, and I feel the weight of it.