Irreplaceable

This is a memoir dedicated to my grandmother. However much I don't express it, I respect her and love her and I plan on cherishing the time that I have left with her.

Irreplaceable

How much can one person deteriorate emotionally and physically? After her husband passed away almost six years ago, I watched my grandmother deteriorate. Gone was her productiveness. Gone was my grandmother’s perseverance. After she fell several times, due to her stubborn attitude, my grandmother’s deterioration accelerated.  Gone were the smiles my grandmother used to spread like cream cheese on a bagel. Gone was the woman who always knew what everyone was doing. I watched her monstrous health conditions engulf her tender eighty-eight-year-old self, bit by bit. However, much to my regret, I never knew the worth of water until my well was almost dry.

            Before, I never paid much thought to my grandmother. In my adolescent mind, she was more of a picture frame on a wall.  I knew of my grandmother’s existence; but her place in my heart was replaceable. My grandfather was the one who interacted with me by helping me with my homework, and having tea parties with me. My grandmother was the one who kept my brother and me in order.

“Eat your food!” my grandmother prescribed.

“Yes, Baa,” we responded.

“Don’t waste anything!” my grandmother established.

“Yes, Baa,” we retorted.

Because of these conversations, I never respected my grandmother in the way I admired her husband. Yet, these views all changed in a matter of seconds.          

The wind made the leaves of the trees surrounding my house creepily brush the windows next to the couch that I was lounging on. I shuddered under the soft blanket my mother had given me. My head was pounding from the concussion I had gotten the week before. All of a sudden, I heard a painful thud. It was followed by a shriek. Next thing I knew, screeching sirens were outside my house. My grandmother and my parents were nowhere to be seen. I was home alone. When I went to visit my grandmother the following day, I did not know what to think.

The tubes! The bed! I got a whiff of the stinging scent of rubbing alcohol. The untouched memories from five years prior were returning. She looked so fragile, like an old vase. If I had touched her, she would have shattered. The look of reassurance that I unconsciously received from my grandmother; one of the many things I had never acknowledged; was not there. I missed it terribly. The eyes were the last things I brought myself to look at. They were hidden by those lids. I resented myself for my inability to recall what was under those lids. What was their color? What was their shape? I feared I would lose my grandmother without ever knowing what her eyes looked like.

“Hello, Baa, I’ve come to meet you. How are you doing?”

The silence was overwhelming.

“It is the painkillers that she is taking, have no fear. She is still here with us,” a voice similar to my mother’s voice answered to my unasked question. This response refused to go further than my ears.

I felt droplets gathering near the brim of my eyes. Not once have I left this place without shedding buckets of salty tears. This time would be no different.

 “Please open your eyes, Baa,” I croaked. My grandmother’s response proved this visit to be different in other ways. Those mysterious eyes fluttered open for a few seconds, and for those seconds, the world stopped. I did not have a pounding headache, and I had no work to worry about. There was nothing in the world but those big beautiful oculi. Her pupils were black as night, and they were surrounded by a chocolaty brown iris. The iris was surrounded by a ring of sky blue, but those spheres said so much more than colors. They oozed agony and distress, but held a certain spark of joy and times of celebration. Yes, there was life in those eyes.

“She will make it,” the voice persisted. But the agony! The distress! They pinched my heart, and overflowed my face with a salty liquid. What was it? Oh, yes, the tears. I ran out of the room and into a white coat. I did not know where to go but back into that agonizing room.

After my face dried up, I realized that something was different. I had gained a new respect for that eighty eight year old woman with the salt and pepper hair. She has been through it all, experiencing the ups and downs of the crystal staircase of life.

Now, when I look at my grandmother, I remember those wise eyes. I see my five year old niece looking at her great grandmother in the same way I used to look at her. I try to pass down the teachings of the eyes down to my niece, but her juvenile mind does not process them.

I am lucky enough to have gained that respect towards my grandmother before she leaves me forever. As I sit by my grandmother, I look up at her as she is serenely resting, with her thick eyebrows in a furrow, and wrinkled face wincing in discomfort every time she moves her pale left leg. I recall the heart wrenching image of her in desperate pain, an image that is engraved in my memory. It hurts. But that comes with respecting and loving someone through the hardships in life. Nevertheless, there are good parts of life, and that spark in my grandmother’s eyes is there as evidence of times of laughter, rejoice, and youthful happiness. Life has thrown dementia, extreme diabetes, and an artificial hip at my grandmother, but she has gotten by, keeping the pleasant memories an arm’s length away. She refuses to let her deterioration engulf her carefree spirit, and for that, I know that my grandmother is irreplaceable.

Lil' Imagination