“Grandma,” I said gently but loudly because I wanted to make sure she HEARD me, “You’re 90 years old. So your mom isn’t with you any more.”
“She isn’t with me any more?” (I held my breath again. Would she get my meaning, or was I too asbstract? She paused. “I don’t remember her dying.”
“It was a long time ago. When your children were small.”
“Oh.” She turned her head away. Another pause, then back at me.
At that moment my uncle came in the room, and the awkwardness was diffused. Grandma’s attention snapped to him, and her mother’s loss was for the moment, forgotten.
But what she taught me in that moment, I will remember forever.
I just wish that I could have told her that the real answer to “Where’s my mom?” is “In your heart.”
My grandmother’s mother, Eva, as a young woman.
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Soon I had to take my leave, pick up my other children from the bus stop. Before I did, I leaned in and kissed Grandma’s papery, wrinkled cheek and said, “I love you.”
“I love you too, hon.” she said.
It is such a privilege to be able to say that to her, and hear it in return.
_____________
In my car, my son strapped in in the back, I was finally free to let the weight of our exchange break forth. The emotions of the visit, of my mom’s surgery the day before, of this INSANE week, both senior members of my matriarchal line prostrate in hospital beds, finally got the best of me. Tears ran down my cheeks and the words spun over and over again inside my mind: “Where’s my mom?”
She’d said it twice. She wanted me to understand. She wanted HER mom. She was broken, hurting, in need of care in a hospital room, injured, unwell, and she wanted her MOM. Her son was there, I was there, her other grandchildren and great-grandchildren have filled her room with their presence, flowers, balloons, and love.
But Alzheimer’s had allowed her to let her true, basic need come to the surface.
“Where’s my mom?”
She’s in your heart, Grandma. She’ll always be in your heart.
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Mothers, this is what my 90-year-old grandmother taught me that day: your children love you fiercely. And they WANT you. Long after you are gone from this earth, they will still want you. Only you. God made you for them and them for you and there are few things that can tear apart that bond if you nurture it. And the truth is? Even if you don’t nurture it, it’s hard to break that yearning that comes with being born of a person. They will want you.
No matter what.
Always.
You’re in their hearts.
My grandmother as a young mom with my mom and my uncle.
Thank you, Grandma, for showing me what I often lose in the day-to-day demands of child-rearing. My children don’t just need me, they love me and they want to be with me.
I will be there for them with every fiber of my being for as long as the Lord gives me breath.
No matter what.
Always.
With all my heart.
