Grandmother’s House

The every-other-year trip to sunny Oklahoma to visit with Grandma (great-grandma to my grandkids) was quite the stressful situation this year, which is the year my hubby’s and my sole remaining parent turns 87. She was hospitalized for ten days a couple of months ago with a terrible case of food poisoning – we don’t buy the ‘flu’ excuse, it wasn’t flu – and we flew our daughter out there to stay with her when she got out because we couldn’t take the time off. Daughter made arrangements for home health care, which she needs because she lives alone in a too-big house. The one her mother bought just off Main Street, which survived the tornado that took out the hotel a block in front and the Presbyterian Church a block behind. Back when my hubby was 8 years old and Norma and Clint ran the hotel.

She has also lost sight in one eye, so needed someone to take her car keys away for public safety’s sake. This also makes her depth perception non-existent, and has led to a series of nasty falls that have us and her other son’s family who lives about 45 minutes away most paranoid. Her friends and neighbors love her, but don’t want to be the ones to discover her dead one day alone in that big house, but she’s stubbornly clung to her independence since her husband of 50 years died over a decade ago.

Luckily she has very tough bones, product no doubt of her youthful career as a Rodeo Queen – champion barrel racer – and the number of times she’d been bucked off her horse. But it’s inevitable that one of these days she’s going to break something, and all her choices will be gone. That would be a very sad end to a wonderfully storied life, and not something we would ever wish upon her. So our job was to unite with the rest of the family and try hard to convince her that she should go into a nice assisted living facility less than a minute away from #2 son.

Her mind is going, at least the short term memory part. She often repeats herself, and tells the same long-ago stories over and over again to anyone there to listen. I figure the assisted living crowd will love her greatly, and never tire of her stories because their memories are bad enough that they’ll always be fresh! Plus there’s bingo, Bible study her son the Baptist minister teaches, good meals served to her in her apartment or at a table in the great-room (with the big screen TV), and the staff is there to make sure all her meds are current and given on time, which prevents those overdoses or underdoses elderly people are so prone to.

Plus, we bought her a nice mini tape recorder so she could go ahead and tell those stories for posterity, write that wonderful book about her life that we’ve wanted her to write for years. Something about her hard-earned wisdom of getting right back on that horse no matter how much it hurts after you get thrown. So pertinent to dealing with the nasty curve balls life throws at us all if we live long enough, and at which she is a certifiable expert.

She lost a husband in WW-II, then married my hubby’s father because he insisted. Loved her the moment he met her, despite her strong independent and rebellious streak. They lived those 50 years in a love story that has been a never-ending inspiration to me, Clint was the best man I’ve ever known apart from his #1 son. She is lonely now, and vulnerable. The boys and sister-in-law pressured her pretty heavily for the change in her circumstances, as of course they had to do because they’re her boys and the love her and they worry endlessly about her.

I had a different job. She got me when I was just 18, and we’ve had the most amazing relationship all the years since. More like best friends or twins from birth, we’ve always been completely honest with each other and aren’t afraid to criticize or generally bitch, or laugh at the silliest or raciest things, as if we shared a private joke.

So I was totally honest. We know we’re going to lose her if we don’t get hit by a bus any time soon, and it doesn’t matter all that much to me how or when. I’m still going to wail and cry and miss her terribly. So will her sons. I respect her independence, and am not going to insist or cajole or push in any other way for her to commit herself to an assisted living facility, but I will say it’s a nice place, nice people, plenty of company and they’ve never heard her stories! It could literally add years to her life, though she is like me in dreading the thought of living to be 100. Yet she might, so she should make arrangements accordingly.

Norma Jean is already the last one standing of her family and friends from childhood, so that’s not a wish she can still dread like I do. So I told her something she’s told us a million times, her way of dealing with the patients of the Gould Farm facility she volunteered for through her church after Clint died. When they asked her advice – and they always did because they considered her their grandma too – she’d always tell them they already knew the choice they would make, so they didn’t need her to tell them otherwise or to support that choice.

That’s what I told my beloved Norma. She already knows what she must do, and she does. She has put it off long enough, and will make the move. I told her we’d do nothing with her house and all her nice things. Not sell it (I might need it someday!) or rent it out, just seal it up and let the bank keep on paying the bills and Brinks to keep it safe. Then, I said, if she ends up hating the place, we’ll just take her home again. I think that helped.

While I’d love to be in a position for her to live here on the mountain with us and let me care for her until it’s over, she’s deathly allergic to animals and nature these days. Plus, my only bathroom is in the basement and the only spare room in the loft. It cannot be. I could leave my family here and move into that big house with her, but she really could live to be 100. What about my life and my kids and grandkids and such? Totally impractical, and there’s no more work in Oklahoma for a 58-year old man like my hubby than there is here. Where he has a job he likes and pays the bills, letting us stay here in our beautiful retreat from the wider world.

But I’ve volunteered for a mission too. She’ll send me the tapes of the stories, I’ve promised to transcribe and send back, she can edit and add, I’ll get the final manuscript all typed up. And then I’ll find a publisher and get it published. Real history, wonderfully funny and exciting and sadder-than-sad stories that may help others well beyond her own lifetime. She owes that to the world, and I aim to make it happen.

I love you most sincerely, Norma Jean. You’ve always been my heroine!

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