Opaque Lucidity

The Last

My grandmother passed away at 5:50AM this morning. She was 94 and was my mother's mother. She leaves behind two daughters, seven grandchildren, sixteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.

My oldest sister, who had spent the night at grandma's bedside, called me at 6:00AM to tell me that she was gone. I got dressed and met my parents and sisters (both of my brothers live in other states) at the nursing home. She was still in her bed, looking as if she was asleep. She looked peaceful and pain-free for the first time in months.

Grandma probably never weighed more than 90 pounds, but the sickness which took her life left her 10 pounds lighter than normal. As I looked at her this morning, she appeared tiny and frail to me for the first time in my life. I began to wonder why I never paid attention to that quality before. It was then I realized that grandma was a giant to me. She was not loud, or boastful or talkative. She had nearly-infinite patience and never lost her cheerfulness, even when pain.

Her life was a study in sacrifice and perseverance. Born in 1911, she was a child during the First World War. Jeffersonville was home to thousands of troops in 1917-18 because of the Quartermaster Depot located here; the town only had, perhaps, 10,000 inhabitants then. It was not uncommon for people in the city to keep a cow in their small backyards. My great-grandparents were no exception.

One morning, the cow was gone. My great-grandfather and some neighbors went looking for the creature without success. However, word trickled back to them that one of the soldiers in a nearby camp had taken the cow and had it staked outside his tent (One can imagine how popular fresh milk was among the soldiers). When confronted, the young man confessed his theft and apologized. Thus ended the shortest bovine military career in American history.

I never knew my mother's father. He died of lung cancer about ten years before I was born. I only really know two things about him: he was in the Navy during World War Two and he was a severe alcoholic. My mother doesn't talk about her childhood very often, but she once told me that she never had friends over to spend the night because she never knew what her father would do or say while he was drunk, which was every day. I did not know until recently that my grandmother actually left him for a time when my mother was an infant; the how's and why's are now lost forever. Because of his disease, my grandfather always had low-paying jobs. Grandma was poor for her entire life.

Despite being raised as a Baptist, grandma followed her husband wishes and ensured that their daughters were reared in the Catholic faith. She took them to Mass, she took them to school, she did all the things a Catholic mother would do---so much so that everyone assumed she was Catholic. She did convert eventually, but only after a priest she knew asked her if she had ever considered joining the Church. In all those years, no one had ever asked her that question.

I am now without any living grandparents, something that is a sure sign of getting older. My siblings and I will relive this day again within the next twenty years, but then it will be our mom and dad. As I saw my mother standing over her mother, I was reminded that your parents never stop being your parents. For a moment, she was that little girl needing her mother, the only person who kept the peace in her world.