The Wads of Winter

My friend Connie raises Geese in Missouri. That’s not what she intended to do with her life. She was an award winning landscape designer in Chicago - but her mother was dying alone on the family farm and her city slicker siblings would not step up.

I’m not saying Connie’s mother “was” dying because she died, but because somewhere along the line she started holding her own.

Her brother grudgingly writes checks to make the problem go away as her sister sits back and criticizes.

It’s the traditional American family.

Hospice still comes out – that’s a surprise. Connie can’t get it through her head that they are there for end of life. When death is not imminent, they go away. When hospice saw my Gram was getting better that’s what they did. I joke that they fired her after four months. She lived years past that.

But Connie needs help, she can’t even accept the thought that they might stop coming. She hates and needs them. She rages on Facebook, she doesn’t want to hear the truth about hospice nurses being there to dispense comfort, not healing. I throw my two cents in like a grenade and run for fear of fallout.

It’s not good, it’s not bad – it just is.

I don’t want to get into it with her. Nobody carries a burden as heavy as hers. Her mom has lung cancer and mild dementia and Connie is in her second winter of horrific bronchitis and migraines. She and her mother live in separate buildings on the land and she has to trudge through deep snow to keep her mother fed and medicated and make sure the furnace is working. Not to mention feeding/watering/caring for the geese and the herding dogs and ….

I would break under her burden.

Today she wrote me privately. I have to take a deep breath to open her emails because they break my heart. She explained it this way. I’m not changing one word – just the punctuation because – well, I’m a Virgo.

She wrote “Not to put pressure on you, but I just can’t deal with people right now. And I don’t consider you a person. If you know what I mean- that is a compliment. You are more like a dog.”

The compliment was significant; we both like dogs better than people.

She wrote a very long email and it seemed wads were the crux of it – the straws that broke the camel’s back.

She said she was losing it due to her mother “stuffing endless amounts of kleenex up her sleeves and then my washing her clothes only to have millions of shreds of tissue all over everything, that then falls off when I take the clothes out of the dryer and then I have to sweep the floor.....her home aid brought red washclothes for some unknown reason--- she has millions here already- and so when I washed her clothes all of her whites came out stained pink. I blew up.”

The pink thing made me snicker a little.

But the tissue up the sleeves … that brought Gram back. She did that. She wadded some of it up and stuck it in her ears too; only in the winter.

Back when she was just a dumb blonde – before the dementia started to take her away. Her ears would be full of it and you’d say something and she’d get pissy – annoyed – like “speak the hell up!” Only she would never say “hell”.
I’d point to her ears and she’d double over with laughter. She’d pull them out and I’d say “there for a second I thought you were deef!” That was one of her words.

I think she had a theory that the wads kept her ears warm. Well, maybe the cochlea. I don’t recall ever having cold cochlea. I guess it could happen.

Hats messed up her hair and made her look like “the wreck of the Hesperus” – whatever that was. She was very vain.

We were exposed to the elements more than most because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Gram brought out the big guns on Saturday mornings when we went door to door with the Watchtower and Awake. She used COTTON BALLS instead of tissue wads. Maybe they were her “dress” wads.

And she wore an oppressively heavy brown mouton coat with tissues tucked up the sleeves. I’m sure she felt quite elegant, but I hated that coat. One Saturday morning, she caught a heel in the hem and I turned to see her rolling around on the sidewalk struggling to break free. The thickness broke her fall, but it looked like she was being mauled by a bear.

We laughed so hard we cried.

Years passed. I grew up and got married … a few times. She got older and dementia eased in slowly. She got a little testy with people. She bought me dog grooming mits for my third wedding. I’ll never know for sure - dementia or one last lucid shot at my credibility?

Then she forgot who we were; but it seemed like she remembered she loved us. I missed her before she was gone.

Yeah, I remember wads.
Connie ended her tirade …

“I have to get my head back on to seeding the fields and paying my debts off and dealing with hospital bills and sewing curtains, getting to meetings and pretending my life isnt freaking me out of my mind.... NOT lose it over pink clothes. And tissue bits. And hypocrites. And loneliness.”

I wrote back that the days are already getting longer – spring is coming. The snow will melt, the new chicks will arrive and the cycle will begin again.

I did not write that she will get well - her mother won’t and one day she’ll miss the wads and the day the laundry went pink.

Unconditional Love

My Gram was a classic dumb blonde ... a glamour girl, more style than substance, with beautiful clothes and airhead ways.

She would hate that I used this photo ... her hair just out of curlers and I can almost smell the cold cream.

Gram's oldest daughter came home pregnant with me at 15. In 1950, that was scandalous.

My biological father ... a second-generation German named Karl Smith - never wanted to set eyes on me. Never did.

I think an attorney squeezed a thousand dollars out of his family to pay for my mom's c-section; Grandpa drank it. (I don't trust my memory on details - they could never be discussed without extreme emotion - even now. )

Around the time I was born my grandfather - a charming story-teller, capable carpenter and talented artist - was sliding the slippery slope into manic depression. My appearance around this time should have been the straw that broke my grandmother's back. That's what I think of when I look at this photo. With all that was going on in her life, she found a place in her heart for the little bastard.

Mom married a jazz musician when I was 2. He adopted me, gave me his name and we three moved to Philadelphia. Apparently I was a mess without my Grandmother, so she came for a visit. When it came time to leave, she woke up early in an attempt to sneak out while I was asleep. To her delight I woke and raised such a fuss she had to "take me home."

When my mother's marriage failed, we moved into Grandma's little white house permanently. By then Gram had a job at the phone company. Life was good - she taught me to shop, taught me to dress, taught me Finnish women are STRONG, taught me sex is eeeee-vil, got her first face lift, cried like a baby when we finally parted ways at my first wedding ... ignored my second wedding and bought me dog grooming mits for the third.

I saw her every week whenever I could - which was almost always.

When she retired she told me "when I get my retirement checks, I buy clothes. If there's any money left over, I buy food."

She liked lunch at Hudson's Eastland, where the rolls were crisp and warm. Once in a while we went for Chinese. That's where we were when I realized her gears were slipping.

Her pupils got very small. She looked up from her soft, sweet white roll and said "when you were born we were thinking about ..." She was getting alphabetical by then. I started at the front of the alphabet ... "Adoption?" I knew they'd talked about it.

To my surprise, she said "no, it was something else... ABORTION, that's it!"

Those words from her lips cut into my heart like a knife. Not only to think it, but to speak that word to me. Something told me if she was right she wouldn't say a thing like that, so I pulled myself together and said "well, it's a good thing you didn't."

Her eyes were still mean little pinpoints.

"Why?"

I smiled.

"Because you'd be paying for your own lunch."

Her pupils went back to normal size and she managed a nervous giggle.

The dementia took a long time to fully manifest. One of her last favorite memories was of the time in Philadelphia when I wouldn't let her leave. By then she was "leaving" as I watched. Seeing her mind die as her body perservered was heartbreaking.

On good days at the nursing home I could still see little glimmers of recognition and hear tiny reminders of our shared past. It didn't matter that sometimes she didn't know who I was or why I was there; the visits did me good. I could still wrap my arms around her fragile sholders or plant a kiss on her furrowed brow.

I can remember the last time I saw her outside at the home. My cousin Tom and I were her favorites. It was a beautiful spring day and we were seeking comfort at the knee of the one who had always been so ready to give it.

She went to the other side two years ago yesterday - just before her birthday. She would have been 98.

I thought I could get through the anniversary of her passing ok, but I can't. I am still a mess without my Grandmother.

I knew when she passed, she would come back in spirit. Which she has - with a bit of a vengeance at times, in dreams and in shaking of things. Most of it's very playful, but some of the dreams seem to say she won't be happy until she sees me again.

Unconditional love. How often do you find that in life?

How much do you miss it when it's gone?

Visits From the Other Side

My Gram died last May. She was 96 or so.

She had dementia, so her brain had slowly been dying for years.

I can remember the onset, noticing the subtle changes. Family members didn't believe me. My Mom said she was just trying to get attention. (They never got along.)

Sadly, I was right. My aunt took her in and created my Gram's own personal paradise - painted in my Gram's blues, planted lush flower beds under her windows, set up her own sitting area for guests and cooked incredible meals. It was a beautiful place in her life, all that love and beauty, but I don't know that she noticed. Her gradual descent into utter looniness took a visible toll on her spirit.

Eventually Gram wound up in a nursing home where she couldn't wander off the dock into the river or set my aunt's house on fire.

Even when she was beyond thought or mental function, it was good to go to the nursing home and get a hug from the real flesh and bones that I have loved so much all of my life.

When I got "the call" I had just driven a 17' Uhaul alone from Michigan to South Fort Myers. I was coming down for a job that "went away" AS I was putting the lock on the back of the Uhaul. I drove the 1300 miles into the unknown, terrified.

Then I got news she was dying. Cousin Robin told me she had a final moment of clarity with those at her bedside - she remembered their names. I cried gasping sobs to have missed that.

I thought if I was lucky, she would come hang out with me in spirit. I joked she would probably be my first guest in Florida.

She was.

I was ready to crumble at that point. Alone at 56, living with Lyme Disease and jobless in a strange new place ... my back - and my heart - were truly breaking. She sent her strength to help me through what would be the hardest times of my life. I could actually feel it coursing through my soul within hours of her passing. There was no way I could have landed on my feet without her.

I've had a number of visits since she passed. I knew she'd do that, our bond is so strong. I also knew once she passed, she would be back in my life with a functioning brain.

At the BF's last night, the kitchen light went off as I stood next to it. I tapped it, it stayed off. When I walked away it went back on.

Gram has been doing things like that. Making pet toys squeak and lights go on and off and pictures rattle. (Only when I'm alone.)

Then this morning I fell back asleep and she was sitting there across the table from me, sort of slouched and relaxed. John Edwards says they keep their quirks on the other side. I've been reading his book on connecting, it's "One Last Time"; apparently I made a real breakthrough because this was an actual conversation. (He has some fairly extensive meditation techniques for connecting, I've gone through them a few times in the past week; but not last night.)

It was not a dream, it was an actual visit WITHIN a dream.

I said "Omigod, you're really here."
She said "You finally get it." (That was just a touch bitchy.)
I said "I love you and miss you."
Then we were quiet for a minute and I asked "how is it there?"
And she just shrugged, sort of a cranky shrug, and disappeared.*

I woke right up, amazed and sort of chuckling.

He says you can actually ask questions, he said to handle "visits" like interviews. I'll be more prepared next time.

I have to laugh that her brain is back but she's still a little on the snarky side.

Did she learn nothing in all her years here???

*This is odd because she has sent me dreams of joy and beauty. It's SO like her to start taking issue with things:-)