(This is a letter I sent to my kids a few years ago when my mother started rapidly declining. I wanted them to remember her as more than the frail old woman they saw. Life is fleeting and relentless, and, while the years are often kind to us they also slowly rob us of everything we have and everything we are. God was very kind to my mom; she was well provided for, and she died peacefully in her sleep.
The elderly must seem like aliens to the young. We become addled, tedious and hard to converse with. My goal is to become softer, kinder, and more interesting as the decades overtake me. To be an 80-year-old that the young will seek out and really want to talk to. God willing.
It never feels right to be motherless. She made it to 88. She was tenacious. I will miss my mom.)
I know that Grammy B is hard to be with in many ways. She is mostly deaf and mostly rude and often cranky. She doesn’t like people, or much of anything else it seems. She often seems like a caricature of the crazy old lady, or grumpy old hermit. But you do not reach the age of 85 without ever having been a real person.
One of my earliest memories as a child is hearing my mother crying in her room. I might have been six. My parents divorced when I was seven or eight. I have no memory of them ever fighting but, I assume, the day I heard her crying they must have had a fight. I had no idea how to process the notion of my mom crying, so I crept back downstairs and went outside to play.
After they divorced, we all moved to an apartment complex in Devon. My mom was in one building and my dad in another; the six kids were divided between them; I think the older ones went with my dad, but we bounced around between them a lot.
My mom got a job as a secretary somewhere; it was 1970 and there were not many options for a divorced mother of six. She always made dinner for us somehow. Funny, the things we take for granted. She struggled with dating and relationships the way anyone would in that situation. We all look for love and approval wherever we can get it, perhaps divorced mothers more so. I do not judge her.
I remember finding a baby robin laying on the ground outside of our apartment building one day. We showed it to Grammy B. She picked it up and tried to nurse it to health. She took it to work with her for days and would keep it warm by keeping it in her shirt, in her cleavage. Yes kids, your grandmother used to have cleavage. The bird did not make it. We buried it under a bush outside “A” building. (the building we lived in) We joke about her love for animals now, but I assure you it is a real thing.
When I was a teenager I treated her awfully. I was selfish and ungrateful. I would disappear for days at a time. I did drugs with my friends and eventually stopped going to school. I lived a bohemian, vagabond life and would often sleep outside. But whenever I got too hungry or lonely I would go back to her, like a stray cat; she would always take me back and feed me. My mom has always loved me the best she could, with the cards she had been dealt.
She did not like it when I joined the Marines. She was married to Poppy (Dave) by then and I didn’t get along with him at the time. I later came to love him very much because he took care of my mom. I was gone for months at a time. I don’t know if I ever wrote to her or called. But whenever I came home there was always a bed, and a warm meal for me. She used to love to cook and was very good at it. Another thing that I took for granted.
Grammy B was at our wedding when I married your mother, and she looked beautiful. I remember Grammy (Cloud) saying to me “Jim, is that your mother or your sister?” Ha. Early in our marriage mom and I would often visit Grammy B and Poppy at the country club where they were members. Yes, she played golf, a lot! They would buy us lunch. We loved it. Your mom and I, two poor people just scraping by, living week to week on a couple hundred bucks I might make roofing that week, sitting and chatting with all these “rich” people. And your grandmother proudly introducing us to her country club friends. We would sit and talk for an hour. She was so happy. I miss my mother’s happiness.
Grammy B paid for our honeymoon. A week in Barbados! It was amazing. That was her wedding gift to us. She had been there with Poppy, and she told us about the birds coming to eat off their breakfast plates on the balcony each morning. The same thing happened to us! We have pictures of it somewhere. What an amazing blessing; a blessing we could never have afforded without her.
We started going to the Outer Banks for vacation; we would rent the cheapest houses we could find. Then we had Megan. Things became complicated. As she grew heavier I eventually developed a hernia carrying her and the wheelchair up all the steps. We needed a vacation house with an elevator. Grammy B stepped up. She helped pay for our vacation rental for years. She has always been generous and giving. Our family would have no OBX memories without her. She was a gift to us from God. Our love for the Outer Banks was funded by Grammy B. When we are there we should think of her and thank God for her.
She has always been proud and stubborn, with God and with people. Mom and I were at Poppy’s bedside when he was dying. She asked me to do his funeral but put her finger in my chest and said, “no bible thumping!” She bristles at the notion of anyone telling her what to do, including God. She has been within walking distance of a church where her son preached hundreds of sermons over the years, but she has never once come to church. I used to give her tapes of the sermons, (remember tapes? Ha), and she would listen to them. The only time she ever mentioned it was to complain about one of them. I don’t remember why. I honestly don’t know where she stands with God. Usually when I visit her most weeks, I pray with her. She folds right into me when I put my arm around her, and always thanks me. I don’t know what else to do for her.
We used to visit because it was easy. Now we visit because it is hard. Pray for your mother as she takes care of Grammy each week. it is not easy. It is often hard to love old people, but they were not always what they are now. They may be a mess, but they were real people once, like us, and they still are. If my mom becomes poor in spirit she will enter the kingdom of heaven. And she will be young and beautiful again. And God will put her in charge of the critters. But until then pray for Grammy B. Remember, inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
Do not push people away in this life or you will end up alone, and small.
I love you guys
Dad.
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”