Breakdown to commence in 3 days.
My grandmother was born in 1926, in the middle of the Roaring Twenties. She grew up during the Great Depression, and because her mother would double the family’s milk supply by making powdered milk and using it to dilute real milk, Nanny disliked milk in any form except her coffee.
In the 1940’s she married my grandfather, a Navy man who manned torpedoes in World War II and had once dated her sister. They had 4 children, one of whom ended up being my mother, the other 3 being my Uncle Larry, my Aunt Kathy Kate, and my Uncle Ricky. She worked at Grant’s Department Store while my mother was young, and did needlepoint and read when she wasn’t chasing my aunt down the street with wooden spoons and managing the family. She was a nurse’s aid at Rhode Island Hospital for damned near all my childhood and probably quite a bit of time before that. For quite some time she and my grandfather lived on Prudence Island, a nice place in the middle of Narragansett Bay. Nanny continued to read and do needlepoint, enjoying the company of her Stitch-n-Bitch group on the island.
Nanny and Pop-Pop were fixtures in my life forever. My earliest memories are from living at their house until I was about 5 years old. I can remember sticking smiley-face stickers all over the toilet and then being put in the corner to think about what I’d done, and then coloring on the kitchen wall while I was standing there. There were ceramic chickens on top of the fridge and a white plastic squirrel on the window sill. The kitchen table was white, but you couldn’t see that because there was always a table cloth on top of it. Sitting at the table one afternoon, Nanny showed me how to move a fruit-shaped magnet across the table cloth by moving it with another magnet under the tablecloth. Later in life she taught me how to do needlepoint on my own, and to do some basic knitting, both crafts that I could never really get into long enough to complete a project. She taught me about port and starboard and what colors stood for each and how to remember them. I learned the names of the birds that flocked to her feeders and the flowers that grew in her yard. She told me stories about my mother as a child, and about how she had to sneak around to read “Gone With the Wind” because it was considered too scandalous for her to be reading.
Nanny never let me get away with shit. I wasn’t spoiled, and my cries of “I want that!” when I saw something completely stupid during the commercials between Saturday morning cartoons were usually met with the response “people in hell want ice water.” Complaints that something was difficult got the standard response “life is tough, kid.” She slowly stole the marbles from my Hungry Hungry Hippos game because it made a braincrushingly annoying sound, and rather than forbid its use she just made it so that I’d eventually not be able to play it.
Two or three years ago, Nanny was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a lumpectomy and radiation treatments, she was declared cancer free and we all went out to celebrate. Everything was fine until this May, when she discovered that the cancer was back and was had spread through her body. In July she was hospitalized and it was revealed that things were worse than before, and she made the decision that she wanted to just go home. The family rallied together to make sure she was comfortable and that she got to enjoy herself as much as possible during whatever time she had left.
Last Sunday I left my mother’s house at the usual time. For the first time since her release from the hospital, she’d spent the day in the bedroom while Eddie and I were over. After dinner we went in to see her, and she chatted with us as well as she could. I gave her a bite of my fudgecicle, and as she started to fall asleep I tried to lean over to give her a goodnight kiss. I wasn’t able to lean far enough over the bedrail, so I kissed my hand and touched her forehead and she commented on how it was the curse of the family’s big boobs that prevented me from reaching her.
Nanny died yesterday afternoon at home, with my kid sister there with her.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I know she was suffering for a little while now, but I didn’t expect the end to come this soon. My heart goes out to you and the family. Sending you virtual hugs.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Thanks
It was much faster than expected. One week she was hanging outside eating clams, and the next she was in bed, unable to swallow much of anything, and a bit confused and zonked out on meds.