My Grandmother and My Children
Small children are able to be present to the elderly in ways that other adults simply aren't.
My eighty-three year old grandmother doesn't know who I am anymore.
The other day, I loaded my kids into our blue minivan and we drive through town, past the old church, and down a long gravel driveway between two cotton fields. Her yard sits like a shaggy green island, overgrown with trees in an organized sea of brown turn rows that stretches for miles in front and behind it. My aunt’s RV sits in the driveway, the house my grandmother was born in sits in its own island of overgrown grass and trees next door. It was my great aunt’s house until her death a few weeks ago.
My grandmother, Oma,1 used to have a huge green thumb and planted almost obsessively. The yard is full of ornamental shrubs, improvised flower beds made of rocks as salvaged bricks, and fruit trees; lemons, oranges, figs, mulberries, grape vines, and loquats. There’s also two huge vegetable beds in the back. When I was a child, that was where we could most often find her.
The 2021 “snowpocolypse” killed most of the citrus, and my aunt has trimmed back most of the ornamental bushes and trees. Still, the yard is chock full of life. Even when her mind started to fade, we could most often find Oma in the back watering her flower beds, pulling up weeds, or, later, collecting container upon container of snail shells or acorns with her sister. Once my great aunt began to lose mobility, Oma stopped, preferring to stay near one of the few people she could still reliably recognize. After Aunt Alice’s death, she hasn’t begun moving again. I most often find her in front of the TV.
I shut off the van, usher the older ones out, unbuckle the baby from her car seat, and walk through the yard gate. They immediately bolt towards the backyard; the mulberry tree has been putting out fruit, and they want to see if it’s ripe. I open the gate and climb the porch steps. Her two small dogs immediately start up a cacophony as I reach the door.
“Oh, be quiet.” I tell them. I open the door and poke my head in, “Hi, Oma.”
My grandmother looks up from her easy chair in the living room. “Hello” she answers politely. She always wears an expression of vague puzzlement, like the person you're introduced to at a party who's waiting to see how exactly you're relevant. She rarely asks me who I am or why I'm there, but I know most of the time she doesn't know.
The last time she asked me who I was was the night before Aunt Alice died, lying in the bedroom in my Oma’s house that had become defacto hers (they had been living in both houses, keeping each other company since their husbands’ deaths, for years. In the final weeks of Aunt Alice’s life, they were both living full time at Oma’s). The house was full of people who were usually rarely or never there, and as I walked up to the porch she looked at me with an air of slight exasperation and said, “And who are you, then?”
“I'm Emily, Matt’s daughter.”
“Oh.” she said. She still couldn’t place me, but she knew she ought to be able to.
I drop my purse on the 100 year old school desk by the door. Aunt Christie rounds the corner, “Hey.” Her hands are full of garbage bags. “I've been cleaning out the back bedroom. Johnathan is coming down.”
We begin to chat about my uncle and his wife and about our plans for the week. Oma sits with a puzzled look on her face the whole time, waiting for context that refuses to land.
I sometimes try to include her in conversation, but it's difficult. Any question I ask is answered with a bemused, “I don't know.” It's a little easier when she tries to start a conversation. It's always something happening in the moment; a cat sleeping on a cushion, the overcast sky, a tree in bud. She can't share the past or discuss the future, but she can share a moment now.
Even when she does share a moment, there's always a sense of nervous reservation. I’m an unknown adult; she doesn’t know what she can politely share.
The kids finish their outdoor investigation and tromp loudly into the house. Oma turns toward the sound. The reserve and uneasiness melt away, and a huge smile lights up her face, “Oh, how sweet!!” she says, seeing the toddler. My six year old daughter rushes up.
”OMA!! We found a mulberry that’s RIPE!!” She holds it up for inspection.
“That’s WONDERFUL!!” Oma says. My two year old climbs into her lap and they snuggle contentedly while my oldest informs her in great detail about the webworms currently in residence in the tree and the best way to get rid of them.
An hour or so later, we sit down to lunch; pasta casserole, bread, and corn on the cob. My six year old and eight year old, both missing front teeth, begin a spirited debate (not quite a squabble, though a bit too close to one for comfort) about who’s teeth are in the best shape for stripping corn off the cob. Oma, sitting in between them, watches with the same rapt attention as a referee watching a tennis match.
“I know I’m missing both my front teeth, but I can eat with my back teeth, see?”
“Oh YEAH?! Well, I’ve still got one of my FRONT teeth, so I can get MORE corn off than YOU can.”
Back and forth, back and forth, Oma’s head snapping from one to the other as she follows. She begins to chuckle, and a mischievous gleam comes into her eyes. Slowly, deliberately, she holds her own cob of corn above her head, as if protecting it from the children on either side.
We all dissolve into giggles.
I go to my grandmother’s to give her access to my children, them access to her, and her to my aunt and me. They bring out the parts of her that we didn’t realize were still there.
Oma’s family has been in Texas since before the Civil War, but she grew up speaking Tex-Duetch, a regional dialect of German that began to die out shortly after World War II.
This is so beautiful and so true. It’s so sad how we segregate the elderly and children away from each other.
My grandmothers both succumbed to dementia. This process was painful in so many ways, but both of them ended up so much more joyful than they were in their right minds. My mother’s mother gradually stopped talking and only sang hymns. No one had ever heard her sing before- apparently she was told as a young girl to just mouth the words in church as she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. She lost her inhibitions along with her short term memory. In the end, she would sing pieces of different hymns along with nonsense words, all garbled together. Maybe she was getting a head start on praising God. My father’s mother babbles like a toddler, but sounds for all the world like she is telling you something very important and you just don’t understand. She adores all of the great grandchildren and they laugh and play with her, just as if she is an elderly two year old.
This isn’t always how dementia is, of course, but I’ve seen firsthand that people can continue to have dignity and joy, even in severe cognitive decline.
I’m glad that you are bringing your children to see your grandmother. It is a blessing to both her and to your children.
Quietly poignant. A heartfelt read.