The Beautiful Quotidian: Oma

My grandma passed away on September 5th. I still don't really know how to talk about it other than to say that I am happy that she is no longer trapped inside her failing body. I'm glad her mind is clear once more. And I'm excited to think about her rejoicing at being her former energetic, sharp, cheerful, and hilarious self. But selfishly, I miss her. I miss the her from over ten years ago when she was still very much my Oma Olea in all of her glory. I miss the her from five years ago that told the same story ten times in as many minutes and made us all laugh with her shocking comments and sly winks. I even miss the her that more recently sat and stared without recognition because I could at least still see her clear blue eyes. But I am glad for her. And I am most of all grateful for the plan of salvation and the opportunity that I have to see her again and be together as a family forever.

I wrote this essay about a year ago. It sums up a lot of my feelings about Oma.

You Can’t Forget Love

My grandmother doesn’t know my name.

It might be more accurate to say that she’s forgotten it, along with most other names, dates, events, and processes of rational thought. My grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease with severe dementia. This disease has come on gradually for over ten years now. The grandma I remember from my youth was an active, enthusiastic, playful and hard working spitfire in a compact little body of a little over five feet tall. She made the best pancakes, took her grandkids on walks, let us collect rocks and bugs and old pieces of rusty metal and wild flowers, and she encouraged and loved us in whatever we did. Now she doesn’t remember how to cook. She probably couldn’t figure out how to turn on the stove. She walks painfully as her body hunches over and her bones continue to grow more and more brittle. When she sees me she doesn’t have any idea who I am. But somehow the love I feel from her is still there. It’s as if a lifetime of love and living for others has filled her being so completely it pours out of her from every pore whether she realizes it or not. She spent her life working for others and trying to make life a little easier for those around her. She loved people. She couldn’t go to the store without finding someone to compliment or help in some way. She’d whisper to me, “It looked like that person needed a little help.” And then she’d continue on her way, unaware of the profound effect her simple actions had on me.

Everyone who has met my grandmother loves her. They can’t help themselves. Her selfless giving encourages love in a way that is powerful and branding. The more you serve people the more you love them and the more they love you. This is something I didn’t come to fully understand until I had a child. The first time they placed my little boy in my arms I was bombarded by a whirlwind of emotions I didn’t quite understand and didn’t yet know how to process. I felt awe, fear, joy, anxiety, relief, elation, love, and a host of other emotions. It was not cloud nine and it was not all roses and pink tinted light. It was intensely real and yet simultaneously surreal. I felt acutely the weight of the tiny creature in my arms and felt the enormous responsibility that came along with him. The next few weeks of colic spells between one and three o’clock am, severe and persistent jaundice, heel pricks and weight checks and nurses telling me my breast milk wasn’t enough and that I needed to supplement with formula resulted in my crying in the shower while trying to cope with my new role. Although I had never thought of myself as an incredibly selfish person, I became all too aware of my egocentric habits when I found that I was truly no longer only myself. I had seen a glimpse of this when I got married. I had needed to adjust. Think for two. But that other person was fully grown and contributed to the relationship in ways that were equal and encouraging. This new entity was fully dependent and in constant need, but the more I served him the more I loved him. A mother’s love is a strange and wonderful thing. It is pure and tender power. It stealthily entered my being until one day a few weeks after my son was born I realized I had never loved anything with such exquisite and tender fierceness in my entire life. The force of it shocked me to my core. The wonder of it is, the more you love the more you give and then the more you love again. It’s a miraculous cycle and somehow there is always more of you to give. More of you to share.

I make it sound so one sided. It isn’t that way at all. A small puckered mouth smashing into my own while chubby, peanut butter covered fingers hold my face in place is enough reward for a lifetime of giving. The first time my baby gave me a flower I cried. Sure, it was half of a dandelion and he threw it at my feet absent mindedly, but I couldn’t have loved anything more. His look of pleasure and delight when I enter his room each morning to fetch him from his crib is a precious gift. The warm snuggle of his arms around my neck and his sweet breath against my neck as he whispers, “Mama,” is pure sunshine.

What does this have to do with my grandmother? Everything. She exudes this selfless love in whatever she does. Her quiet appreciation and delight at seeing our family laughing together even though she can’t hear what anyone is saying and she can’t remember who we all are or why she is with us shows me this love. Her exuberance about music and dancing and her spunky and quirky sense of humor while she makes us all laugh shows me this love. Her clinging to my grandpa, the one last person she can usually remember and his patience with her repetitive questions shows me this love. It’s as if her lifetime of giving branded her eternally. She can’t remember why, but she loves us and she always will. She loves me.

About a year and a half ago, I overheard a private conversation between my grandparents as they sat together on the couch during a holiday gathering, holding hands as usual while the hustle and bustle of my large family whirled around them, quietly appreciating the loving cacophony of sounds. This is how the conversation went:

Grandma: “Where am I supposed to go after this?”

Grandpa: “Home. Where you live.”

Grandma: “Well, where are you going to live?”

Grandpa: “Wherever you live, I’ll live there too.”

Grandma: “What?”

Grandpa: “We’ll live together. We’ll always be together.”

Grandma: “Good.”

And because she wouldn’t be my grandma if she didn’t, she looked around to see if anyone was listening, caught my eye and winked. “Well, I don’t know if that’s very good.” Her eyes lit up when I laughed loudly in response.

I married young. My husband and I were both still attending university and living in a small apartment that I had painstakingly decorated with family-inherited furniture, cheap garage sale purchases and antique store finds to try to make it look like an Anthropologie catalogue. When she met him, my grandma approvingly told me that my husband was tall and handsome. I agreed and watched happily as she coyly laughed at a joke he made. One day, not long after our wedding, my tall and handsome husband and I came home from classes, exhausted and tired of homework and tests. We simply lay down on our bed; jackets and shoes still on, and fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon. Lying on our backs with our hands clasped between us. I woke up a little later and leaned over to kiss his cheek. There are pros and cons about at what age you get married. But I’m glad we get to grow up together.

When I first introduced Grandma to my son she cooed admiringly and told me what a beautiful baby I had. She said he was big and strong and hers eyes twinkled because he was a boy. And he had curly hair. Although I wanted so desperately for her to remember the way she held me the same way, she couldn’t. And somehow, it was enough. Sometimes I wonder why I love to write about my grandmother so much. I constantly find myself reflecting on my memories with her and the things she taught me. I think I love to remember these things because she can’t remember them personally. But I can and so I will. I am the self-appointed keeper of her memories, or rather the memories that she and I shared. I can at least do that for the woman who spent her life helping me understand what it really means to love.