Still Remarkable

Last night shortly after seven as I was headed off to a carefree coffee date with some of my house church girlfriends, I got a call from Emily. One of those calls that it is not fun to be on either end of.  She was calling to tell me that our grandma was sick.  And more dramatically, that my cousin Anna had tried to call her and had gotten a busy signal a couple times, found that odd, and had gone over to her house to check on her.  She and her husband found Grandma bruised, confused, and very sick, on the floor slumped against a bookshelf.  It was clear she had been not well for some time.  The family had been over on Sunday for lunch, there’s always someone there every day or two – but not Monday, and not til Tuesday night. This is the part of the story that brings me to tears.  Our Grandma, who has so many people nearby who love her, sick and alone for at least a day, probably more.  Anguish.

Grandma has a “life alert” button on her wrist that she can easily press, but she had for some reason not even been able to do so, probably due to confusion (which is unusual for her). (There goes THAT great idea.)  She had knocked her phone off the hook and hadn’t been able to use it either.

Anna called 911 and Grandma was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where it was determined that she has some sort of internal bleeding that started all this distress. Praise the Lord she did not break any bones, praise the Lord Anna found her when she did!!

Now she is getting all sorts of tests.  Last night they were giving her blood as well.  My mom stayed the night with her in the hospital.  Please pray for our Grandma, and while you do, please read what I wrote about her a couple years ago, and be reminded what a special and wonderful woman she is, and how we love her so.  Thank you.

A Remarkable Woman
originally published September 14, 2009

Yesterday was Grandparents Day. Emily and I saw Maria tweeting about how she was writing about her grandparents, and we thought this was the perfect time to introduce you to our grandma.

There is a lot we could say about our grandma. Like, how when Em’s dad was helping her clean out her house recently (where she’s lived since 1969), he found over 50 plastic rings you get off the top of a milk jug, that she was keeping around, you know, just in case. Or that she watches waaaaay too much cable news, or has been convinced for as long as we can remember, that she is going to win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse (seriously? Stop getting her hopes up, you jerks!)

But while those things are evidence of her quirkiness, they are not really indicative of who our grandma is.

She is quiet, she is very shy. Recently when my mom and I were talking about how my Sophie doesn’t really like big groups or parties, Grandma laughed, and said, “Well she gets that from me!”

My grandmother is certainly old-fashioned and conservative, and yet she is the most independent woman I know. She married at twenty, and had two kids in 11 months (that gives me heart palpitations!). She moved from her home in Kentucky to Ohio with her husband and two toddlers so he could take a job at Frigidaire and give their kids a better life than they had. She kept house for twenty-four years, and then, our grandpa died suddenly. He had a heart attack at age forty-four. Her two kids were grown, and she was alone, about to become a grandmother, supposed to be enjoying an empty nest. Who could have imagined?

Fortunately, Grandma had gotten her driver’s license a couple of months before Grandpa died. Up until that time, he’d done their grocery shopping every Friday after work, because she didn’t drive.

When speaking of Emily’s parents wedding, which took place just three weeks later, my grandma told my mom, “I never wanted to break down so bad in my life.”

But she didn’t. She got a job at Elder-Beerman, a local department store, and worked there for the next twenty years until she retired. I think she retired because she was 65 and that’s what people DO when they are 65. She could have worked longer, it seemed. But she devoted time to being a grandma. She was the best hide-n-seek player EVER, and really, still is. I have never seen her run out of patience with a child. She mowed her lawn, cleaned her own gutters (and has been scolded for doing the latter as recently as this spring!), and every Sunday, cooked an amazing lunch for her entire extended family. Emily, her sister, Anna, and I owe our closeness I think, in large part to Grandma and her Sunday dinners. To say the majority of our childhood bonding happened there over biscuits, meatloaf, hide-n-seek, and rummy games would not be an exaggeration.

Now our grandma, though thinner and a little more white-haired, still opens her house to us every Sunday, though we don’t make it nearly as often. But we do see her as much as we can, because, well, she is the best cook in the entire world, and because our children adore her. They love her never-ending supply of desserts, coddling, and energy for hide-n-seek.

And we love watching them love her.