Robot Journal : I am now grandmother-less

8/29/2011

Grandparent Dynamics
What is (or what was) your relationship with your grandparents?
For the most part, I only had grandmothers as my grandfathers passed away when I was young. I’ve been talking to a few people about how their family was designed in terms of grandparents - were you closer to one pair compared to other? Or were they equal?

Mine

I’m now grandmother-less. My mom’s mom passed away in her sleep early Friday morning. She was 92 and the past year or so had been pretty hard. Lots of ailments and hospital visits. My uncle reports that a few weeks ago she started to hint that she knew that she didn’t have a lot of time left. I mention the whole “grandparent dynamics” because as much as she was a nice lady and we did visit with her and do normal grandparent things, I wasn’t nearly as close with her as my other grandmother. I went to college in the town where both my grandmothers lived. They lived two blocks apart and I lived maybe a mile away, yet I spent a ton of time with one grandmother and only really visited the other one during holidays.
Kind of screwed up.

I don’t know why it was like that. If some sort of professional smart person observed and studied our family I’m sure they could come up with a reason. We just spent way more time with my dad’s family than my mother’s family.

Funeral
They had a small family thing at the cemetry. Some of my friends who come from huge families would be shocked if they could see how small our family is. My parents. An aunt. An uncle. A cousin. My brother and I and Mrs. Robot. Somehow we still took two cars. One mini-van could have held us all.

Then there was a reception. Eight years ago my grandmother moved to an assisted care facility - that sounds kind of sad and creepy, but this is one of those crazy places where she her own apartment and they ate in a fancy dining room everyday. Some people had cars and still drove. Many had dogs and cats. It was pretty cool.

My grandmother was apparently the nicest and sweetest lady there. I know this because we had the reception (do you call it a reception?) in the lobby of her care facility. Holy crap. People had all sorts of sweet-ass stories. Which was funny because she was a nice lady and grandmother, but I never would have called her “sweet”. She could be all-business grandmother sometimes.
But, here at her apartment, she was the most popular lady with everyone there. Lots of friends. She welcomed new people. She loved the staff and they loved her.

Polly
Her best friend was a woman named Polly. I met her today. She’s pretty torn up about my grandmother’s passing. She knew all about me as my grandmother apparently regaled her with stories about me and my brother and our lives.
They were total BFFs.

After their evening meal, they’d walk back to their apartments and as Polly turned to go down her hallway, they would sing “Tomorrow” to each other as they parted.

“Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow...”

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