Unglued
My grandmother passed away a week and a half ago. I pretty much knew it was over when my mother called a few days earlier to tell me that my grandmother was in some sort of vegetative state - she couldn't move, but her eyes could open and she winced when the nurses turned her to prevent bedsores, so she was given a morphine drip and kept comfortable. I'm glad she didn't have to lie there like that for too long.
Family members sat at her bedside around the clock until she went in her sleep.
My husband's paternal grandmother passed away just a few weeks earlier after years of dementia and living in a home for the elderly. Such different women: we were over at my SIL's for dinner after GrandmotherIL's funeral and the best anyone had to say about her was that it was a shame she couldn't unite her family. Apparently she doted on her daughters and ignored her sons, causing much conflict between them (until they plain stopped speaking to each other). My FIL hasn't willingly spoken to or of any of his siblings as long as I've known him, while my MIL has told me stories of how rude and downright cruel her MIL was. Mikael's grandmother died alone.
As far as I can tell, my grandmother was the glue that has kept my Swedish relatives on civil terms. My mother and her brother aren't close, perhaps due to my mom's chilly relationship with her SIL, who in turn has a very troubled relationship with her daughter, and none of my cousins really keep in touch with my sister and I. We don't dislike each other or anything, we just don't talk. I am relying on Facebook to keep us from disappearing from each others' lives altogether.
Because no one will invite us all for Christmas now, or Easter, or birthdays. No one will make the elephant in the room retreat to the corner in shame when we do meet. No one will send cards to all of us on special occasions either. No one will paint our portraits, or our children's (she painted, my Mormor) or offer us a lovely piece of cake and seven kinds of homemade cookies and coffee after dessert. I also wonder if anyone, even my mother, will be motivation enough for my sister to visit Sweden for months on end ever again. My sister hasn't visited anyone that I know of, besides our grandmother, for an extended period.
Only a few years ago, when she turned 89 or 90, my grandmother said she would try anything once. She wasn't kidding. I was in my twenties when I realized that other Swedish women of her generation did not travel abroad at least once a year, oil paint, walk six miles a day or speak excellent English. And I doubt I have met anyone with her unique combination of culinary and artistic talent, curiosity, openheartedness and meekness.
I don't think I was my grandmother's favorite grandchild - far from it. But I do knwo that no one in my Swedish family has loved me so unconditionally. I am a little less home now... a little more displaced. But my mormor sleeps with the angels.
Margareta Lantz
Sept 17, 1915 - Feb 4, 2009