She Kept Going
Two months ago, my 82 year old grandmother went to lunch with my aunt at Bob Evans at the corner of I-270 and Sawmill road. They had a nice meal with mediocre service and left only an 11% tip as a result. As my aunt was paying the tab at the front register, my grandmother got started towards the car. She is old and slow and knows it, but she keeps going. As she walked past the newspaper vending machine with the chipping white paint, her hip bone snapped and she crumpled to the ground. Some people fall and break their hip when they get older, but hers broke which made her fall. Her right wrist snapped as she used it to break her fall. One week and two surgeries later, she was sitting upright in an orthopedic bed at a posh upscale rehabilitation center in Dublin; complete with marble floors and its own hair salon. All of us felt like everything was going to be fine.
My grandmother has suffered many health related pit falls in the last 15 years, but she has always kept going. Diabetes in her 20’s. Heart disease in her late 60’s, Pneumonia 4 times in her 70’s, and an over-arcing blood disorder the name of which is so obscure that I cannot remember it nor would I be able to pronounce it aloud if I could. The woman is a workhorse, so we though nothing of this hip and wrist road bump. We saw her a couple times in the rehab center and she looked better every time we went. Things were looking promising - just as we had expected.
Fast forward to now. I get a late call from my father. He is a truck driver and on the road for two weeks at a time, so it is not unusual for him to call me at 9:00 at night. But this time he has a certain unease to his voice. So I mute the hockey game and give him my full attention. He tells me he has some bad news. He tells me that Grammy is in the hospital and has been for 3 days. He tells me her lungs got weak on Sunday. He tells me that she had to be placed on a respirator. He tells me that it isn’t helping.
I get very quiet.
He tells me that the doctors have decided to sedate her for a week - to allow her lungs to rest and regain their strength to eventually take over breathing for her. I comment that it sounds like they are euthanizing her. When old people go under, they sometimes don’t come back up. My father gets very quiet.
So I am sitting here with the understanding that this time, my grandmother probably won’t keep going. The inevitability of death is something that even my grandmother openly discussed in casual conversation, but it is something she has physically avoided up until now. If anything, I would say that she has outworked and overcame death more often than I thought possible. Her body may have been frail, but her spirit was behemoth. And that is how I will always remember her.
My grandmother has suffered many health related pit falls in the last 15 years, but she has always kept going. Diabetes in her 20’s. Heart disease in her late 60’s, Pneumonia 4 times in her 70’s, and an over-arcing blood disorder the name of which is so obscure that I cannot remember it nor would I be able to pronounce it aloud if I could. The woman is a workhorse, so we though nothing of this hip and wrist road bump. We saw her a couple times in the rehab center and she looked better every time we went. Things were looking promising - just as we had expected.
Fast forward to now. I get a late call from my father. He is a truck driver and on the road for two weeks at a time, so it is not unusual for him to call me at 9:00 at night. But this time he has a certain unease to his voice. So I mute the hockey game and give him my full attention. He tells me he has some bad news. He tells me that Grammy is in the hospital and has been for 3 days. He tells me her lungs got weak on Sunday. He tells me that she had to be placed on a respirator. He tells me that it isn’t helping.
I get very quiet.
He tells me that the doctors have decided to sedate her for a week - to allow her lungs to rest and regain their strength to eventually take over breathing for her. I comment that it sounds like they are euthanizing her. When old people go under, they sometimes don’t come back up. My father gets very quiet.
So I am sitting here with the understanding that this time, my grandmother probably won’t keep going. The inevitability of death is something that even my grandmother openly discussed in casual conversation, but it is something she has physically avoided up until now. If anything, I would say that she has outworked and overcame death more often than I thought possible. Her body may have been frail, but her spirit was behemoth. And that is how I will always remember her.