My Grandmother

Like most everyone else, I was born with two grandmothers, my mother's mother and my father's mother. I was fortunate in my early childhood to get to live very nearby to my mother's mom and therefore developed a very close relationship with her. My father's mother lived farther away, but I grew to know her better as I grew older. Both women were wonderful moms and grandmas, and I am blessed that one of them, my mom's mom is still alive and we still talk often. But this post is about neither of these wonderful women. This post is about the grandmother I gained in 1994 when I married my husband, Thom.

Thom's grandmother grew up in the deep South -- Louisiana and Mississippi. She was one of 14 children. She was born in 1921. She quit school to work during the depression and she married young. She had one daughter --- Thom's mom. She loves to laugh. She's easy going. She loves the Lord. She loves her family.

When Thom and I lived in Massachusetts neither of my grandmothers ever came to visit, neither of them willing to fly. Thom's mom and grandmother came up when Thom graduated seminary, when Kara was born, when Thom was ordained as a deacon at our church, and when Caleb was born. She was the grandmother who stayed in my home. She was the one who stayed up late and watched movies with Thom and I and his Mom. She was the one who sat in my kitchen and talked with me about things like cooking and marriage, taking care of babies and what it's like to have a spirited daughter. We laughed, a lot. And, when I didn't always understand my mother-in-law, mostly because she thinks like my husband and my daughter--or the other way around really -- I understood Grandmother. Pretty soon the distinction between her being Thom's grandmother and her being mine began to fade.

Thom and I will be celebrating our 17th anniversary in April. That's 17 years of knowing Thom's grandmother as part of my extended family. That's 17 years of her becoming a grandmother to me.

Somewhere along the way stories started to lean in the direction that things were changing with Grandmother. A fall here or there. Items going missing in their house and turning up somewhere odd. Strange stories of seeing ghosts or worrying that people were breaking into their house. Things were shifting.

Now things are different. Grandmother is often confused. Grandmother and Thom's mom come to visit every Christmas, but Grandmother no longer knows who we are really. She sees my parents, and it's like she's never met them before. She's nice to the kids, but she doesn't really know that they are her great grand children like she once did. Yesterday was Christmas, but Grandmother didn't really know it. She didn't understand who the gifts were to or from and wondered all day why she was wearing new slippers, not realizing they were one of her gifts. She wandered around a little bit lost all day long. And there was no way to reach her.

But today. Today she is here. And that is what inspired me to write a post after so long. Today she laughed. She talked about flowers. She tried to understand Kara when she gently and sweetly explained how to click Legos together. Even at this moment she is following along with the movie Angels and Demons, a pretty complicated suspense movie. And here's the catch .... It's 1:30 in the morning!!!! Thom and his mom played music together and sang hymns all e evening. Grandmother stayed awake and followed along in a hymnal. After the kids went to bed I was going to sit and get an article done for a deadline. It was late, but I could do it. Grandmother came and sat with me. She was laughing. She was chatting. She is herself tonight and she asked me to come and watch the movie with them. Sure it was already midnight and its crazy to turn on a movie at midnight, but it's crazier to sit in the kitchen and do work, when this might be one of the last times ever that Grandmother is happy and lucid and asks me to be a part of what the family is doing.

I'm awake in my living room with my family at 2am because my grandmother of nearly seventeen years is having a good day and I didn't want to miss any of it.