The Family I’ve Always Had

Filed Under being creative, from the heart, happiness, life changes, love, people, spiritual practice

After my grandmother was pulled over by the police for driving “one mile an hour” down a hill after dark, she decided to stop driving. The rest of our little family agreed this was for the best. Over the last two years, Nanny’s health had sharply declined, and she was becoming less independent.

During a family meeting of my parents, my oldest brother, his wife, me, and my husband, we all agreed that Nanny was very probably lonely, and needed help managing her health, nutritional intake, and finances. It also concerned us that her short term memory was less reliable; her paranoid statements were becoming more alarming than amusing; and she seemed depressed and easily agitated.

In my family, we tend to always look at two things first as the source of any problems: physical health and personal relationships. Nanny was sitting at home most of the day, eating frozen food, and not being nearly as social as she used to. Not to mention, my brother and I weren’t spending much time with her.

My brother and his wife - who have four kids - volunteered to have Nanny move in with them. They both work and the kids are all in school, so Nanny would have some privacy and quiet during the day, as well as some energy and life in the house on the weekends. They needed a larger place, and within a week, we’d found a five bedroom house across the street from my house! They moved in two weeks later. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad put Nanny’s house up for rent.

A year ago this time, I probably talked to my grandmother once every two weeks on the phone, and saw her about once a month. Now, I talk to my grandmother almost every day, and see her four or five days a week, if not more. I can pop over to visit with her as easily as checking the mail. She is always happy to see me. Sometimes I make her a sandwich, or help her with something, or we just chat while she goes about her business.

Even though this has been an adjustment for everyone, I feel a tremendous amount of relief: I’d had no idea how lonely my grandmother was. I used to hear about old people in nursing homes whose families would visit them once a month or only on the holidays, and think, “That’s really sad; that’s your mom/dad/grandma/granddad!” And yet gradually, I’d become more and more distant from my own grandmother, just taking for granted that I’d spend more time with her “later.” Looking back, I see how easily that happened.

Last spring, my decision to move back to the suburbs of my adolescence - the suburbs I’d hated and sworn never to return to - seemed like a weird faux pas. I had to keep explaining it to my friends, and started questioning my progressive identity. But something compelled me; I don’t know what. That line from The Sunscreen Song kept playing in my head,

The older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Maybe it was my grandfather dying last fall that helped me get real about my relationship with Nanny. I didn’t know him well, and we weren’t close, but we loved each other. When he died, it felt like a sudden zip! Everything he’d thought and felt, remembered, desired, hated - it just evaporated with him. I can recall looking at the dark hole of his open mouth, the large head, and the massive eye sockets. And it occurred to me: I would never know the half of it.

Unlike her ex-husband, Nanny has never pushed me away. All I have to do is be there. I’ll drag my feet to pick her up from here and there; huff silently to myself as she slowly puts on her coat, but it’s always worth it. Last night, after we picked Nanny up from choir practice, she told me and Michael the story of her first visit to the community pool. Neither she nor her little sister could swim, so her father instructed them to sit on the bench after they changed, and he’d take them to the wading end. But Nanny wanted to take a closer look, so she’d stood at the edge of the pool, and noticed its beautiful white marble walls, and how the light hit them, and … she just jumped in. She went straight to the bottom, and looked at the walls all the while. Eventually, she floated back to the top. And her little sister was screaming “in awe,” she said, and her father was so distraught he returned to the men’s dressing room to sneak a drink.

He looked at himself in the mirror, but found no new line or wrinkle on his face, It’s probably somewhere inside me, he thought, then he ran the tap, washed his hands, and went out. ~The Cave, Jose Saramago