Grandma Wrangling 101
I am standing in the produce section of the grocery store anxiously looking around for my mother. She had gone to get toothbrushes and had left me with my grandmother. Leaving me with my grandmother meant I was tasked with the all-important job of what we affectionately call “grandma wrangling.” Grandma wrangling is something I have been doing since I was a teenager. When we go out in public it is my job to make sure grandma does not offend, scold, or lecture anyone whom we did not arrive with. It is a critically important job. One that takes considerable training to do correctly.
Today, I am failing miserably. In my search for my mother, I have neglected to keep my eyes on my grandma. Now as I look back to our cart, I see that my grandmother has made it an aisle over from where I am standing. I start to walk over when I see my grandma reach into someone else’s cart and pull out a bag full of corn. The owner of the cart has not noticed yet and I all but sprint over to grandma. I tell her to put the corn back and that we can’t just take things from other people’s carts. “Of course, I can, I wanted it so I took it,” she responds while rolling her eyes and nabbing the cart right out of my hands. I got a D- in grandma wrangling that day.
Fast forward to 2020 and I am standing above a hospital bed in a studio apartment with a kitchenette. My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and fought it for about 6 years. Above all my grandmother was one of the most stubborn people I have ever met. She just returned from a hospital stint, I lost track of the number of them. A hospice social worker sits at the fold out dining room table asking me what my grandmother’s wishes are, if she wants a DNR, what her pain scale is during the day etc. In my head what I am witnessing unfolding in this space is not real. There is no way that my grandmother, the same woman who somehow managed to tour her way through Egypt on a river boat at 80 years old, is dying.
One of my earliest memories of her is in a restaurant. We had been running errands together and I was hungry. My grandmother stopped into an Outback restaurant where she swiftly declined a highchair and crayons stating I was too intelligent to need such things. The waiter approached our table and she said “My granddaughter is starving; do you see her? She is simply starving. Bring me whatever you can get out here fastest and I do mean fast. Go, do it now. My God are you slow.” My grandmother was from Paris and immigrated to this country at the age of 24. She despised pizza, eating more than one starch at a meal, and detested fast-food restaurants. Our waiter brought us cheese fries covered in bacon. I looked up at my grandma just in time to see her wipe the disgust from her face. She gave me a look of approval and I dug in. Since that day nothing reminds me of my grandmother quite like bacon cheese fries.
When we left the hospital that day, I told her everything the doctor had shared with me. Looking her in the face and telling her that the prognosis was a few weeks and hospice was suggested was one of the most difficult life events I have ever experienced. I owed it to her to be honest and direct. I wanted her to have every possible option available. She didn’t respond to me and merely looked out her car window. When we got to her apartment, she squeezed my hand and I knew she was communicating what her words couldn’t. She went to go take a nap and I waited silently in the kitchen as the tears spilled down my cheek bones.
When I was a child, I would sit on my bed and listen raptly to her stories. The stories were so vivid that I would request specific ones and if she was feeling generous, she would oblige me. Sitting next to her on her hospital bed I felt like a child again. Except the stories had changed this time. One of the last stories she ever told me occurred after hospice had left and all the decisions had been made. As I was about to tip toe out of the apartment, she called me over to her with the motioning of her hand. The three gold bracelets she always wore hanging loosely on her frail arm. I bent down next to her and she began to tell me about a time when she went to visit and unidentified couple who had a toddler. The toddler was in a biting phase and his parents were distraught and at a loss as to what to do. My grandmother whispered to me “All they had to do was teach him to kiss instead of bite. Remember that for my grandchildren, won’t you? Teach them to kiss instead of bite.” Before I had a chance to reply she closed her eyes signaling me to leave her be.
What struck me about her last story to me was the dichotomy of it from all the others. In every story told to me before she was detailing her heroism or adventures. The rolodex includes tales of butlers in Alaska, cruise ship captain’s dinners in Hawaii, fur shopping in Canada, bribing concierges in Paris, the list goes on, but nothing like this. Never had she told me a story quite like this one. I later detailed it to my mother who had never heard of this couple or their toddler before either.
My grandmother passed away a short few days later. The call came in the middle of the night, as they often do. I remember sitting numb in my bed. I refused to turn the light on in my bedroom. Light makes everything real, highlights what we do not want others to see. I sat and hoped that every decision I made was what she would have wanted. The thing about grandparents is we idealize them. I would always grandmothers on television portrayed as cookie baking, hug giving, warm, and comforting people. My grandmother never fit the mold. She expected perfection from those around her. Every time I passed an exam in college, I would call her and her immediate question was “What did everyone else get, were you the highest grade?” Despite not fitting the mold I know she loved me. Her way of showing it was different from other grandparents, but she gave me what she could.
Her death left me off kilter. Role reversals will do that. We all have an age we think of ourselves as in our mind. For me I was still seventeen years old. Not quite yet an adult but working towards it. Standing at my grandmother’s grave I felt my age for the first time in my life. A family member asked if I wanted to say a few words about her. I stood there unmoving struggling how to characterize this woman. I loved her so much, but I didn’t always like or understand her. Sometimes I would walk into her home and be greeted with “Wow don’t you look fat today” or “I knew it was your birthday I simply did not care.” In front of other people, like the Outback waiter, my needs were her priority. I still haven’t found the right answer for how to characterize her. The only way I know how to make sense of it all is remember her humanity. We don’t get to choose where we come from or who makes up our family. We do the best we can with what we have. Her death made me wonder why I was never enough of a granddaughter for her. Maybe it was the grandma wrangling and not allowing her to insult others in publics. Or maybe it had nothing to do with me at all. I won’t ever get to know. I could speculate for hours on end, but I don’t need to anymore. I remember her as she was and honor her the only way I know how, to tell her stories.
