Maybe Time is Proof Enough

The house my mother grew up in contains two distinct halves: the front half consists of a kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, and living room. The back half contains all four of the other bedrooms. Each section has its own air conditioner, thank God, which made it possible for me and my grandmother to live comfortably in this shared space for two years and eleven months. Like most elderly people, my grandmother got cold easily, while I was almost always too warm.

Our existence living together was cordial, fun, and unique. Sometimes we felt like college roommates, who would be eager to sit and have a glass of wine or beer after a work day. Other times we felt like an old married couple who had about enough of each other’s conversation. I remember one Tuesday I came home early, about 4:00pm, and Bombinar was at the kitchen table. (We grandkids called my grandmother ‘Bombinar’ due to a pronunciation mistake made years ago by a toddler version of my cousin Katlyn, now 27. There are discrepancies in the spelling of the name, and Bombinar, Bomaner, and Bominar are all considered generally correct. The humor, of course, lies in the fact that we are struggling to correctly spell a word derived from a mistake.)

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘I’m ready for us to open that bottle of merlot.’

So with my work clothes still on, I opened the wine and poured generously for us both, intuitively knowing that she needed rest as much as I thought I did.

At 6:30 each night we’d both stop what we were doing and watch The Wheel. It was an unspoken ritual; we were both pretty good at guessing the puzzles from our kitchen table, and more than once made fun of a contestant who totally botched his turn. One of her dreams for me was that I’d try out for the show, compete, and win a newer Nissan Versa. And that she’d be there to see me get married. I honestly don’t know which is less likely.

I was her ‘favorite chauffeur,’ she would say, and to save time, she would call my cell from the front of the house and ask, ‘Are you ready for us to go?’ She was too tactful to simply say that she was ready to go, and I appreciated her willingness to use the landline for this purpose. I’d answer the call, and make my way to the front of the house, prepared to back out her car and help her walk to it.

Thus did two years pass – comfortable, consistent, odd – both her and I living lives amusingly and unexpectedly linked together. There was no real reason why I was the particular grandchild that moved in with her after my grandfather died in the fall of 2016. I’m number 8 of 16, and I had other cousins living in town when my grandfather passed. By no means am I the kindest, the most social, or the hardest working grandchild, but for whatever reason (a prompting of God perhaps, or a subconscious desire to sneak out of the same windows my aunts did when they were teenagers) I mentioned the idea to my grandmother, and she agreed to let me live in the back of the house for almost three years.

Maybe that’s a small comfort for anyone; the reasons for doing things aren’t glaringly obvious or a result of an active will or writing on the wall; some things simply are, simply happen, and we are put in these settings with the choice of how to interact each day. The day in, day out responsibility of just showing up and being with my grandmother became both my role and the reward of this period of life.

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About a year ago, the calls from the front of the house ceased to be just a summons for her chauffeur.

One call in the middle of the night: her heart rate and blood pressure had spiked and we needed to get it down.

Another call: she was dizzy and wasn’t able to see clearly.

Another call: she felt freezing cold, but was burning with fever.

After those types of calls, we left the house in an ambulance rather than her GMC. The two years of simplicity became a memory far more quickly than I’d have wished, and my family’s concern became the day in, day out process of being present and available in case anything serious happened.

I realized after her death that I had constructed my own plan for her life and transition to the end. That she would be well cared for and peaceful, being comfortable and taken care of by professionals, that we would have opportunities to see her and visit her as well. I wanted what so many wanted: to experience only the positive end of her growing old; sweet calm visits, clean atmospheres, quality conversation that ends with me going back to my own house and her being taken away by a highly trained nurse.

But she passed without much warning in November. No ambulance ride, no call from the front of the house. Just a checkup with the cardiologist that turned out to be more serious than we thought, a procedure that was less successful than we hoped, a quiet passing that happened more quickly than we wanted.

I fear that this sounds like a story about me. And I wish it didn’t. But all I have to offer, really, is a description of a short season of my life, a selfish season, a period that was never planned or purposed; I suppose I’d like to say that I learned a lot from my grandmother. That I learned a lot about what it means to be sacrificial, and to give up a little bit of comfort for someone else’s good. I think I did. I wish that I could say that I did all of those things faithfully, out of the great love I had for my grandmother. Truth be told, much of the time it was an active choice and effort to be with her. It was hard living with an 82-year-old, and I never felt like I did enough. Not because she was dissatisfied, but because I think we humans live with an identity based on performance rather than presence – the belief that what I accomplish is more important than who I am. That my value to another human is based on what my physical self is doing, rather than who I am when I’m with them. My grandmother and I simply were, for two years and eleven months. Friends, roommates, companions. I watch myself look back and scrutinize and try to prove to myself that I made the most of our time together. Maybe our time together is proof enough.

And as you’ve made it to the end of a 5-minute read, I wish I could leave you with a lesson or moral or some valuable quote from my grandmother that would tie a bow around a loose story. But I’m writing this from the kitchen table in her house where we used to watch Wheel, a house that I still call home even without her, and wondering how this transition is going to look and feel. And I don’t know when I’m supposed to leave, or how I’m supposed to leave, and I honestly didn’t even know that she was about to pass away.

Because she didn’t call from the front of the house. And I guess I just wasn’t ready for us to go.