Grandma

Three years ago this May, I hugged my grandma for the last time.

We both knew that’s what it might be, though we hoped it wouldn’t. I’m so thankful for two and a half more years of phone calls, pictures, Christmas gifts and cards. I’m so thankful she got to meet my daughter this year, first through the screens of our devices, then through the screen on her window at the assisted living facility.

I’ve been writing what I wanted to say about her for a couple of days in my head, and it never comes out the way you want it to.

Grandma loved that I was a writer. She had written quite a bit herself, and I think would have been happy if some of her little stories had been published. She encouraged my journaling, saying that I would have a whole book there to publish one day if I wanted to. My grandpa would print out my blogposts for her and they would sit on the little table next to her chair in the living room. It’s been a joy that over the last few years various members of the family have had her stories printed and bound. After years of waiting Grandma got to see herself in print.

My grandma was a particular woman. She had strong convictions and a strong will. I’m not unlike her in that way. She could never understand why I didn’t stay in “this country” more, I think mostly just because she wished I was closer.

We did spend a lot of time together. When we were in Kentucky during my childhood, we almost always stayed at their house. I have an early memory of going to the ER with her in the middle of the night. I can’t remember how old I was, but my breathing got raspy and I think I might have thrown up. My parents must have been traveling, so grandma loaded me up in her car and took me to the doctor. When we got older and lived with her again, she gifted me the only mammal I had ever got to have as a pet – a little gray goat we dubbed Evil Knievel. Why or how she came up with the idea, I do not know. While that situation didn’t last more than a few months, my memories of the lengths she went to for her grandkids have endured.

I lived with her a fair amount as an adult too. At this point, these are the years that stand the clearest in my memory. Her house is where I spent the last few months before I went to college. It was my rent-free base during summer breaks, and my hub any time I needed to be in Kentucky.

I lived there again the last few months before I got married. Grandma was already getting quite a bit weaker by this point. We got in fights about who would do the dishes (she would sneak into the kitchen trying to wash up even after repeated pleas to let me take care of it). We talked about her childhood and college years. We watched the Walton’s together, and I tried to convince her to turn the news on less. I would go running and buy her donuts and make dinner, trying to love her well but knowing I couldn’t stay to take care of her forever.

She was very concerned that I got married “so late,” (twenty-six) and was eager for me to have a baby. When we sat at the breakfast table that last morning eight months after my wedding, in the kitchen of her 1960s brick ranch, she looked across at me and said, “I bet you’re pregnant.” I assured her that if I was, it was a biological miracle, but she could not be dissuaded. When I finally called her (two years later) and told her we were having a baby, she said she had put in her order for a girl. We have a lot of little boys running around the family these days. I was happy to be able to acquiesce to her request.

I’ve been cataloging our old home videos over the past month, and Grandma features heavily. My grandparents gifted the video camera to my parents to ensure that they could watch us grow up, even from an ocean away. There’s one sequence in particular that has been sticking with me. It’s the day before we fly to Belgium in 1995. I am about to turn four years old, and our family has been living in the U.S. for two and a half years. We’re staying with my grandparents, everything cleared out of our rental home and packed for the flight.

The video is just everyone sitting in the living room. Aunts and uncles come by to see us. The conversation is random, a little scattered. My sister and I cavalierly see guests off with a boisterous, “see you in four years!” All the while my grandma rocks in her recliner, never less than two grandkids sitting on top of her. Perched on the arms of the chair and in her lap, my grown-up heart is touched at how we soaked each other in before saying goodbye.

Grandma and I said goodbye a lot. Quick goodbyes at the end of phone calls. Big goodbyes as I drove off to college or got ready to board another plane across the ocean. One that sticks humorously in my memory is when she sent me and my now-husband off after she had met him for the first time. She told him he was welcome back any time – my grandpa added that he was welcome any time so long as he was coming with me.

That last time we hugged was right before my husband and I left for Azerbaijan. Her health hadn’t been great for a while, and she was not a young woman. I couldn’t help tearing up, even though I was trying to hold it together. Tears filled her eyes (which was not uncommon) and she said, “You just have so many goodbyes to say.”

She sometimes struggled to understand my perspective, but she had a great capacity for compassion. This was obvious in the decades she spent teaching, and the ones after her retirement when she volunteered in the school system and at the crisis pregnancy center. She called it “going to work,” even though she never got paid. So long as someone needed her, there was work to be done. That was one of the things she struggled with the most as she got older. As she felt less needed, she didn’t know where to fit in the world.

Grandma used to get appeal letters all the time. I’d walk down the long gravel driveway to get the mail for her, and when I brought it in she would ask, “Did they send me my million dollars?” I find myself asking my husband that now when he checks our mail.

She never got her million dollars, but she did get lots of people asking her for money, because she gave to so many charitable causes. I remember one of the places she donated to sent her a Christmas card that played a recording of the kids singing when you opened it. She showed it to us and her voice caught as she started crying, moved by the opportunity she was helping to provide.

I think one of the things I love the most about my grandma is she earnestly believed that one person can change the world. If you asked her about it, I don’t know what she would have said, but that’s how she lived her life. She threw herself into causes and her heart was soft to the needs of others.

When someone dies it’s easy to canonize them – erase all their faults and paint a saintly picture. My grandma was not perfect. She and I used to get into little spats, and sometimes she drove me crazy. When I was in high school she had a habit of loudly washing pots and pans before I was out of bed in the morning, so I would awake to the clanging of dishes just outside my bedroom door. She was constantly doing home “improvement” projects, and if she asked me to do something and I didn’t get it done within the hour she would set out to do it herself. This is how I came to find her fixing the bathroom carpet with a butter knife, at a point when getting up and down off the floor was not really something in her repertoire.

I’m hesitant to include this next part on the internet, but I think it’s the most important lesson my grandma ever taught me, so it doesn’t seem right to leave it out. As Grandma got older, one of the most challenging things for me was watching her struggle with her self-worth. She was a hard-working, self-made woman. She had a master’s degree and a successful career. She was a pillar in her community. As her ability to contribute got smaller, I think it was difficult for her to redefine herself. She loved to give, but I’m not sure she was as good at receiving.

I remember one time, sitting at that same breakfast table, telling her that none of us loved her because of the things she did, but simply because of who she was, and that would never change. She teared up and changed the subject. She wasn’t one to discuss her inner feelings, and that’s why I’m not sure how she would feel about me writing this.

But I’m writing it about it not to expose my grandma’s weakness, but my own. That same struggle is one of the biggest in my life. I constantly try to define my value and my worth by what I can contribute and achieve. I struggle to believe that people will love me simply because I exist. When I start vocalizing these doubts, my husband always looks at me and says, “Okay, Millie.” He knows how it exasperated me when Grandma wouldn’t just let me love her for who she was. When I remember how very much I loved her, even as she grew weaker and more helpless, it helps me see how I am loved regardless of my contribution. And I loved her very much, and that means I really, really miss her this week.

Though I miss her, I wouldn’t have wanted to hold her back. One of the things that brings me joy right now, besides the fact that she is no longer in the physical pain that had plagued her for years, is she no longer has any doubts about her worth. That veil has been taken away, and as she stands face-to-face with the Savior she knows exactly who she is. She understands herself to be loved in the unconditional way that so many loved her over the years.

I really wish I could give her one more hug right now, but I can’t. So, to honor her legacy, I want to strive to live my life in all the admirable ways that she lived hers. Dedicated to her family. Married to my grandpa for over sixty-five years. Generous with her time and her money. Hardworking and industrious. Determined and willing to advocate for her beliefs. And I hope to learn to live in a grace that I always saw her struggle to find. Because just like I loved her unconditionally, I know she loved me that way too, and I want to acknowledge that legacy of love by trusting that I have a value I don’t have to earn. Because I know she had a worth she never had to earn.

I love you Grandma.