Remembering

My recent trip back home is still in the forefront of my mind. I’ve been recuperating this week, catching up on laundry, tending the garden, spending time with the dogs and generally easing back into my daily routine. GymRat recently wrote about change and how she disliked change and I’ve also been thinking of that. While I agree with her on one level, I’ve also always enjoyed the mystique that can often surround change – not knowing exactly what’s around the next corner or what the next day will bring also brings with it a tinge of excitement.

There are times when we can see change coming and our response is either to prepare ourselves for it, attempt to forestall it or meet it with the open arms of acceptance. I recently experienced two great changes in my life. One of the changes was the death of my grandmother, Mama Owens. By disclosing her name, I am giving up some of my anonymity here but I feel I want to do her the honor of calling her by name.

Mama Owens was 99 years old and so her death was not unexpected. I had been preparing for it for years because several times I have received phone calls in which I was told she would not last long. She always rallied, always fought back from the pneumonia which tried to claim her and always came home…until this last battle. There were no oxygen tents this time, no hospitalization, no valiant efforts to preserve her life. Her body had worn out, but her heart stubbornly kept on beating. Her mind was sharp but her physical being was so frail that she had to be subdued in order to keep her from getting out of the bed and causing physical damage to herself. She was medicated in order to maintain a sense of calmness.

The last time I visited her was in May of this year when I made a quick trip back home and went to see her for three successive days. I sat on the floor on an air mattress to speak to her because they had lowered her mattress to that level so that she wouldn’t harm herself by falling out of bed. She was so weak and small and she couldn’t rouse herself from the drug-induced sleep enough to recognize who was trying to speak with her. She didn’t seem to be in pain and yet this was no way for her to live, suspended between life and death and identifying with neither. It broke my heart.

The third day – Mother’s Day and my last day there – I returned to see her and she was fully awake but not really alert. She was slow on the uptake and obviously under the influence of sedatives. When I took her hand in mind it felt so clammy and cold and she smiled up at me and commented that my hand felt warm. As I pulled the covers up closer around her, I was shocked again at how small her body had become.

I held her hand and spoke to her but she seemed to drift in and out of our conversation. I sat quietly beside her and realized this visit was the first time I had ever seen her that she was not impeccably groomed. She was very clean but her hair was mussed and straight from lying in bed. I had brought my camera but I instinctively knew she wouldn’t want me to use it. I didn’t. I felt content sitting there with her hand in mine, alternately brushing her fingers to my lips and kissing her forehead as I leaned to brush her hair back. I was happy just to look at her face.

I looked away for a moment and when I looked back at her she was smiling and her eyes were misty as she softly said “You look just like my Patalija”. I burst into tears and said “I am Patalija, Mama Owens”. We cried together as we hugged and I said a prayer of thanks that she somehow had rallied enough to know me.

She said words to me that day that let me know she was at peace and I am grateful to her for that. The last gift she gave me in this lifetime was on that same day. I told her good-bye and returned to her side several times to hold her again and kiss her again, finding it hard to leave. As I stood in the doorway, I turned to look at her one last time. She smiled across the room at me as she said “I’m going to remember you just like this”.

Eight weeks later I stood beside her again and though the room was full of people I felt we were alone as I thanked her for all she had meant to me in my life. As I spoke with her I was aware of how beautiful she looked lying there in the clothes and jewelry she had chosen with her hair perfectly framing her beautiful face. I smiled through my tears and said “I’m going to remember you just like this”.

Mama Owens

August 23, 1903 – July 5, 2003