"I Have Four Grandmothers"
Shortly after our departure, my grandmother died. It was time. She lived a long, full life, but her last two years were diminished by dementia. Unfortunately, Carol, Jeremy, and I were unable to be with our family and her friends to celebrate her life at this special time. Below are comments Jeremy shared on his web journal. Mine will follow.Thursday, February 09, 2006
...in the palm of his hand...
I have four grandmothers.
Simple math would indicate that it's difficult, or some other form of abnormal, to have four grandmothers. I'm comfortable blaming most of the tangle on my dad's childhood in Okauchee, Wisconsin. I handled the abnormality as a child by embracing only some of the options available to me.
I love two of my grandmothers. And both are in the process of dying.
As much as I wish I was privy to my unleashed imagination, I don't usually remember my dreams. But last night, or the other night, or any night that isn't this moment of sunshine, I remembered more dreams than most nights.
A face-less grandmother, one of the two, had died.
In the first dream, I was back home. It was summer, my family and I were outside, surrounded my a fence. Mom and Megan were largely emotionless. But my dad and I were wailing. Gertie, who helped to raise him back in the years when the now-94-year-old still loved to fish, had been so important to who he became, that he was reduced to sobs. I could understand why he was crying, so I was consumed by convulsions of tears as well.
The second dream was different, I was here in Hungary, left alone thousands of miles away to deal with the loss of a grandmother. This time it could have been Elaine, an 86-year-old who could deal Sheepshead or Robin Yount-talk with the best of them, all the while pooring her Milwaukee's Best into a tall, thin glass.
In the dream, I did the only thing that made sense, apparently. I went to visited the oldest person I know in Heves, a speckled old lady named Barbara who happens to speak English. (I saw her again walking in to the library today, she handed me a piece of paper with her address on it because I still haven't made good on my December promise to visit her.) I asked Barbara for permission to touch the oldest piece of cloth that her family owned. I don't remember what it was, but the moment helped me. I thought, smiled, and walked away.
My goodbyes have already been said to both grandmothers, I won't get a second chance.
They're special grandmothers. For more than just teaching me Kings-in-the-Corner and cribbage. For more than just Christmas presents and happy memories. For more than just Bob Uecker's April-Sunday-1987 Home-Rome-Call. For more than just how they raised my parents and lived their lives.
They lived through amazing times: wars and depressions and peace and prosperity. The have amazing stories I will never hear again. And in my family's history - i'm probably a 5th or 6th generation American at best - they were the last to know, to learn from, the brave souls who carried a names Jewett or Robinson or Lewis or Klauck, or simply the blood in my sister and I, across the Atlantic as they ventured to America.
The German families and Irish families and who-knows-what-other-kinds of families, intent on carving out a new life for their family, who migrated to a new land of promise. I get to live that life of promise, such is the good-fortune of my inheritance. It means I even have the chance to live back in those "old countries," if only for a few seasons.
But i feel a sad loss, such a bittersweet loss, as i think back on my grandmothers. My family is losing so many stories, left untold or unremembered, especially those of how we came to be so lucky.
My prayers wouldn't do much good, I fear, but I trust that theirs will be well-received.
posted by OlympicTrekker @ 3:21 AM
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