All the while I was at camp, I kept getting phone calls from my mom updating me on the status of Grandma. Because of my nursing background and the reality of older people, broken anything, and surgery, I kept fearing that every phone call was going to be my mom saying my grandma had somehow taken a turn for the worse. However, that phone call never came. My grandma is recovering well in the rehab unit of the nursing home.
Four weeks or so after these events, I finally got out to see her. This past Monday I took "no-sugar added" cookies and coffee for her. She had just laid down to nap when I got there, and I felt a little bad for waking her, but she gladly got up and went with me to the lobby. Her roommate is a 99-year-old lady who is not fully there mentally and often keeps Grandma awake at night or during the day with her moaning. I feel bad for Grandma. She's lost more control over her life.
While we were sitting at the table, Grandma was paging through the newspaper. She doesn't care so much for current events as she does for the obituaries. I have a hard time fathoming what life is like when you are constantly seeing who of your friends or acquaintances has died. As she closed the paper, she laughingly said, "Well, I didn't find mine, yet." I laughed because it was funny and I love that she has a sense of humor. But as I sat and talked with her, the realization hit me that when I leave for India, I may come home without a grandma to return to. I pray that she lives longer, but life is fragile, especially at her age. My three years in India will most likely turn into six. So much can happen in that time.
I look ahead to my time still in the States and think I have so much time, yet as I think that, I realize it passes so quickly. Each moment I have, I try to prepare myself well for saying good-bye. Honestly, when I say my good-byes before the plane takes off, I don't leave expecting that to be the last time I see everyone; I get to come home relatively often while I am gone. Even when I say good-bye to people I figure I will never again see, I still have hope that the "randomness" of life might put us back in contact--so many of those good-byes I just had. I wonder how many of my good-byes will be final.
I pray I have many more coffee dates with my grandma. I pray that I will get to know my grandma better with the coming months and years. I look at her wrinkles and gray hair and think of all the years that went into making her who she is. There was a year when she was twenty-five. There was a time when she had hopes and dreams of falling in love. I often wonder what life looked like to her at that time. What did the world look like through her eyes?
