(no subject)
This is far from done, but I'm at a loss as to where to go with it and how to end it so I'm looking for your help. It just kind of drifts off, because I don't know how to tie it up, in a sense. Suggestion and critique on anything would be great.
I was afraid she was dead. We were standing outside my Grandma Helen's heavy bedroom door at the assisted living apartments and I was growing anxious. My Mom knocked again, hitting the metal knocker to the door even harder than before. Still, there was no sound of movement from inside. My sister and I found each other’s identical nervous glances. My mom fumbled with the doorknob, willing it to open, even though we all knew it wouldn’t. I could picture her, lying in her bed, still clad in her pale blue pajamas, as peaceful a death as I could muster up with my imagination.
A nurse walked by, making her rounds. My Mom jumped in her path, eying the jingling keys attached to her belt-loop. “Please.” She was slightly breathless. “Please, can you open that door? My mother’s not answering.” The nurse was agitated at having her job interrupted, but she was used to the flustered relatives of the elderly. She obliged without a word, swinging the door open and continuing on before waiting to see what we would find inside.
Grandma was in her pale blue pajamas, the ones that were too big her now that she’d lost so much weight and her bones had disintegrated, just like I had imagined her. But unlike my imagination she wasn’t laying in her bed, she was in a crumpled heap on the floor.
But she wasn’t dead.
There was a frantic rush to help her up and a frantic rush of questions about how she’d gotten that way. From the bits and pieces she managed to convey and we managed to piece together it was figured out that on her way to the bathroom she’d lost her balance getting out of bed and ended up on the floor. She couldn’t get back up. The long stain ran down the leg of her pale blue pajamas confirmed our story. She had never made it to the bathroom.
With my mom’s strong arm around her waste and her other arm firmly supporting my grandmother by the elbow; she led her into the bathroom, to clean her up, to dress her, to brush her teeth, to comb her hair. As time moved on for the rest of the world, it seemed to have moved backwards for my grandmother. Where she had once been the strong woman to make it through World War II, raise a family in a tough neighborhood and dance the polka with her husband better than anyone else at the Polish Community Center, now she couldn’t even make it out of bed and to the bathroom herself.
When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, I can remember running through her kitchen in New Hyde Park on Long Island. She was proud to live there. Proud to work all day around the stove in the steaming kitchen, proud to serve her husband and her family a dinner that defined her polish heritage, proud to have lived the American dream. I knew she did those things and she was proud, because my mother reminds me over and over again, but all I can remember is running through her kitchen. I can’t remember her standing by the stove, I can’t remember her ever setting plates around the dining table, I can’t remember the polish dishes I know I ate and I only know the stories of her travels all over Europe during the war that includes nuns in an orphanage and a passage on a boat at sixteen that took her through Ellis island through my mother and my uncles. I can’t remember her pride.
On Christmas eve we were always allowed to unwrap one present each, but the adults got to choose which one. My Grandma Claire insisted we unwrap hers and no one had it in them to argue with her. Our one gift on Christmas eve turned out to be matching red jumpers with plaid pockets and a white turtle neck to wear underneath, practical and hideous. “For Christmas mass tomorrow morning.” She said, admiring her own handiwork in the home-sewn garments.
She called me Lawyer Laura. She told me to never stop being argumentative, to never lose my stubbornness, to question everything. Everything not including her. Anytime I made a face at this, she told me she was Judge Jackman and lawyers get kicked out of the court room and forfeit their case if they argue with the judge. If this had been my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, my teacher the pope or the president I would have argued. I would have had to been wrestled into that disaster of a dress, and then I would have 'accidentally' torn the unfortunate piece of clothing on any pair of scissors I could find. But it was my Grandma Claire I respected, feared and admired enough to obey.
The next day in church I tugged on the lining around the chin of the turtle neck. I can remember my Grandmother looking down at me. I was slumped in the pew, unhappy, drumming my fingers on the wooden seat. Her lips never stopped moving and sound never stopped leaving her mouth as she sang the hymn, but I had the distinct impression that she was smiling. It was an unmistakable smile. It was almost a smirk. She looked forward once again, staring into the bald head of the man in the pew in front of us, but still the smirk remained. Was she chuckling to herself? In church!? I looked up in awe. Without a word, she reached down grabbed me by my upper arm and with incredible strength for a woman with five adult children she lifted me off the pew, stood me on my feet and pushed her book of church songs into my hand. “Sing.” She whispered.
I sang.
Only a year or two after my memory of running my through my Grandma Helen's kitchen, my dad's mom, Claire, died suddenly. It was in January, only a week or two after she had smiled at me in church on Christmas day. The cause of her death is irrelevant. What was relevant were the freshly used snow shovel they found still dripping, leaning against the wall in her breeze way, the half finished stew she had been making sitting on the stove and the book, almost finished, turned upside down to mark her place on the coffee table. Those were the things that were important about her death. She had died suddenly and it was tragic for everyone around her who had expected her to be around for many years to come, but I couldn’t help but think more about the driveway she’d just shoveled, the meal she was about to eat and the book she’d been reading. All these things represented her personality. She was strong and independent, self-sufficient and smart and that was how she died. It strikes me that I can remember all this about her vividly, even after seven years, but my other grandma who I still see often I cannot.
I wait for my mom to finish in the bathroom with my Grandma Helen. They are in there a long time. I sit at the end of her small bed, in her small room. The room is wallpapered with pictures of family, of friend, of places she’s been, all things she can’t remember anymore, but with all the homely touches in the world this place would still feel bland. It is a holding area. It’s a coffin before the coffin. A place that makes an attempt to distract you from the inevitable end with futile games of bridge and an endless supply of brand muffins. In front of the main door there is a “Home Sweet Home” mat, but there are metal poles lining the walls for the elderly to steady themselves on, there are buttons beside every residents bed so they can call for a nurse if they need to, there are extra walkers and wheel chairs stored in every room, just in case. When Grandma Helen’s children had first decided she couldn’t live by herself anymore, alone in her apartment in New Hyde Park, where there were stairs to fall down, thresholds to trip on and too much work to be done she kicked and screamed her whole way to assisted living. For weeks she pouted angrily in her room, refusing to eat, refusing to talk, refusing to see any of her children. This wasn’t her home and she knew it. But soon the memory of her actual home faded and she forgot to be mad at her children. As her body deteriorated, so did her mind. Maybe this is the body’s way of coping with its own fear of the end. Taking away the brain’s ability to think, takes away its ability to let fear consume it, or maybe it’s the fear that causes the mind to get that way in the first place. Despite what I try to convince myself, I know she is afraid. I see it when she struggles to sit up straight. I see it when my mom, to her a woman just like any of the other nurses, feeds her. I see it when she is lying on the floor, helpless. She is afraid of the end, because she knows it’s coming and it’s unavoidable.
I think about my Grandma Claire with her snow shovel, her stew and her unfinished book, a day in the life of Claire Jackman. I wonder if she was afraid of the end, but I think not. A woman afraid that her death is nearing doesn’t spend what could be her last day on earth shoveling a driveway she will never drive over, cooking a meal she will never eat or reading a book she will never finish.
A human brain has a habit of remembering the beginnings of things and then ends of things. The middle gets lost in the turmoil of neurons. I don’t believe that it’s the beginning and the end that defines you’re life, but it is what people see when they think back at a person, maybe if there is an afterlife it’s what a person remembers about their own life.
Thanks.
I was afraid she was dead. We were standing outside my Grandma Helen's heavy bedroom door at the assisted living apartments and I was growing anxious. My Mom knocked again, hitting the metal knocker to the door even harder than before. Still, there was no sound of movement from inside. My sister and I found each other’s identical nervous glances. My mom fumbled with the doorknob, willing it to open, even though we all knew it wouldn’t. I could picture her, lying in her bed, still clad in her pale blue pajamas, as peaceful a death as I could muster up with my imagination.
A nurse walked by, making her rounds. My Mom jumped in her path, eying the jingling keys attached to her belt-loop. “Please.” She was slightly breathless. “Please, can you open that door? My mother’s not answering.” The nurse was agitated at having her job interrupted, but she was used to the flustered relatives of the elderly. She obliged without a word, swinging the door open and continuing on before waiting to see what we would find inside.
Grandma was in her pale blue pajamas, the ones that were too big her now that she’d lost so much weight and her bones had disintegrated, just like I had imagined her. But unlike my imagination she wasn’t laying in her bed, she was in a crumpled heap on the floor.
But she wasn’t dead.
There was a frantic rush to help her up and a frantic rush of questions about how she’d gotten that way. From the bits and pieces she managed to convey and we managed to piece together it was figured out that on her way to the bathroom she’d lost her balance getting out of bed and ended up on the floor. She couldn’t get back up. The long stain ran down the leg of her pale blue pajamas confirmed our story. She had never made it to the bathroom.
With my mom’s strong arm around her waste and her other arm firmly supporting my grandmother by the elbow; she led her into the bathroom, to clean her up, to dress her, to brush her teeth, to comb her hair. As time moved on for the rest of the world, it seemed to have moved backwards for my grandmother. Where she had once been the strong woman to make it through World War II, raise a family in a tough neighborhood and dance the polka with her husband better than anyone else at the Polish Community Center, now she couldn’t even make it out of bed and to the bathroom herself.
When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, I can remember running through her kitchen in New Hyde Park on Long Island. She was proud to live there. Proud to work all day around the stove in the steaming kitchen, proud to serve her husband and her family a dinner that defined her polish heritage, proud to have lived the American dream. I knew she did those things and she was proud, because my mother reminds me over and over again, but all I can remember is running through her kitchen. I can’t remember her standing by the stove, I can’t remember her ever setting plates around the dining table, I can’t remember the polish dishes I know I ate and I only know the stories of her travels all over Europe during the war that includes nuns in an orphanage and a passage on a boat at sixteen that took her through Ellis island through my mother and my uncles. I can’t remember her pride.
On Christmas eve we were always allowed to unwrap one present each, but the adults got to choose which one. My Grandma Claire insisted we unwrap hers and no one had it in them to argue with her. Our one gift on Christmas eve turned out to be matching red jumpers with plaid pockets and a white turtle neck to wear underneath, practical and hideous. “For Christmas mass tomorrow morning.” She said, admiring her own handiwork in the home-sewn garments.
She called me Lawyer Laura. She told me to never stop being argumentative, to never lose my stubbornness, to question everything. Everything not including her. Anytime I made a face at this, she told me she was Judge Jackman and lawyers get kicked out of the court room and forfeit their case if they argue with the judge. If this had been my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, my teacher the pope or the president I would have argued. I would have had to been wrestled into that disaster of a dress, and then I would have 'accidentally' torn the unfortunate piece of clothing on any pair of scissors I could find. But it was my Grandma Claire I respected, feared and admired enough to obey.
The next day in church I tugged on the lining around the chin of the turtle neck. I can remember my Grandmother looking down at me. I was slumped in the pew, unhappy, drumming my fingers on the wooden seat. Her lips never stopped moving and sound never stopped leaving her mouth as she sang the hymn, but I had the distinct impression that she was smiling. It was an unmistakable smile. It was almost a smirk. She looked forward once again, staring into the bald head of the man in the pew in front of us, but still the smirk remained. Was she chuckling to herself? In church!? I looked up in awe. Without a word, she reached down grabbed me by my upper arm and with incredible strength for a woman with five adult children she lifted me off the pew, stood me on my feet and pushed her book of church songs into my hand. “Sing.” She whispered.
I sang.
Only a year or two after my memory of running my through my Grandma Helen's kitchen, my dad's mom, Claire, died suddenly. It was in January, only a week or two after she had smiled at me in church on Christmas day. The cause of her death is irrelevant. What was relevant were the freshly used snow shovel they found still dripping, leaning against the wall in her breeze way, the half finished stew she had been making sitting on the stove and the book, almost finished, turned upside down to mark her place on the coffee table. Those were the things that were important about her death. She had died suddenly and it was tragic for everyone around her who had expected her to be around for many years to come, but I couldn’t help but think more about the driveway she’d just shoveled, the meal she was about to eat and the book she’d been reading. All these things represented her personality. She was strong and independent, self-sufficient and smart and that was how she died. It strikes me that I can remember all this about her vividly, even after seven years, but my other grandma who I still see often I cannot.
I wait for my mom to finish in the bathroom with my Grandma Helen. They are in there a long time. I sit at the end of her small bed, in her small room. The room is wallpapered with pictures of family, of friend, of places she’s been, all things she can’t remember anymore, but with all the homely touches in the world this place would still feel bland. It is a holding area. It’s a coffin before the coffin. A place that makes an attempt to distract you from the inevitable end with futile games of bridge and an endless supply of brand muffins. In front of the main door there is a “Home Sweet Home” mat, but there are metal poles lining the walls for the elderly to steady themselves on, there are buttons beside every residents bed so they can call for a nurse if they need to, there are extra walkers and wheel chairs stored in every room, just in case. When Grandma Helen’s children had first decided she couldn’t live by herself anymore, alone in her apartment in New Hyde Park, where there were stairs to fall down, thresholds to trip on and too much work to be done she kicked and screamed her whole way to assisted living. For weeks she pouted angrily in her room, refusing to eat, refusing to talk, refusing to see any of her children. This wasn’t her home and she knew it. But soon the memory of her actual home faded and she forgot to be mad at her children. As her body deteriorated, so did her mind. Maybe this is the body’s way of coping with its own fear of the end. Taking away the brain’s ability to think, takes away its ability to let fear consume it, or maybe it’s the fear that causes the mind to get that way in the first place. Despite what I try to convince myself, I know she is afraid. I see it when she struggles to sit up straight. I see it when my mom, to her a woman just like any of the other nurses, feeds her. I see it when she is lying on the floor, helpless. She is afraid of the end, because she knows it’s coming and it’s unavoidable.
I think about my Grandma Claire with her snow shovel, her stew and her unfinished book, a day in the life of Claire Jackman. I wonder if she was afraid of the end, but I think not. A woman afraid that her death is nearing doesn’t spend what could be her last day on earth shoveling a driveway she will never drive over, cooking a meal she will never eat or reading a book she will never finish.
A human brain has a habit of remembering the beginnings of things and then ends of things. The middle gets lost in the turmoil of neurons. I don’t believe that it’s the beginning and the end that defines you’re life, but it is what people see when they think back at a person, maybe if there is an afterlife it’s what a person remembers about their own life.
Thanks.