October 16, 2006

Tie that Binds

My cousin Anne said that our grandmother is shedding her skin. She's lost 11 pounds since June, which is a lot considering she was almost all bone to begin with.

"We talk a lot about Daddy," my mom told me. "She wants to talk about Jo and Billy and Dick."

Last week she sent me a card, dictated to my mother, and as I read my grandmother’s words via mother's flowing script, I realized that I don't own anything with my MeMe's handwriting on it. I don't know why that would matter, but it does.

The card was just an I'm-thinking-of-you card and inside she'd stuck two $5 bills. She'd heard that Starbucks raised their prices (a whole nickel) and she wanted to pick up my coffee for the week.

"She wants to do little things like that a lot more now," my mom said.

They bought her "going away clothes" as she is calling them - a pink nightgown and a pink housecoat to wear over it. She finally decided who she wants to give her little diamond studs to - the earrings her daughters presented her with on the auspicious occasion of her 90th birthday, almost nine years ago. "I want Sophia to have them," she said. So my mother took out the notebook that lists furniture and books and china - a handwritten record of who gets what the day my last living grandparent dies – and wrote down, “diamond earrings, Sophia.”

The big pieces - like my grandfather's roll top desk - will be sold at auction for the sake of "fairness." The remaining kids agreed that whoever wanted whatever it was badly enough could pay the estate for it. That seems weird to me... that children would fight over or have to buy back something that belonged to their parents. It seems weird, but not unlikely. I should know, as I almost had a meltdown at the thought of a wash stand being sold at auction when I desired it so much. The wash stand isn't much of anything. It's old and it's wood and it's no big deal, but for some reason, it represents my grandmother. It belonged to her eldest sister, Lois, who was born in 1899 and who died a childless widow. She left almost everything to her little sister Jo - who else was there? - and my grandmother cared for Lois's things with reverence and respect. My mom told MeMe that I wanted the wash stand and she said, of course. So there is my name, in this amended, wouldn't-stand-up-in-court spiral bound record of all my grandmother's worldly possessions.

I asked my mom why she was telling me all this. Certainly she didn’t think my grandmother was going to die tomorrow. “No, I think she could go any day,” my mom answered. “Then again, she can afford to live to 105, so who knows?”

Our lives are short, whether we live to be 98 or not. But I know, and I know my grandmother knows, that eternity is what we are waiting on. That gives me comfort. That no matter what and no matter when, I will never lose her.

Posted by hannah at 10:03 PM