Grandma died at 96 yesterday

Her last three years were her most difficult, of course. Her last two months, her last 10 days... It just got harder and harder for her.

Now she is gone. My last grandma.

I am thinking of my other two grandmas now. My father's mother died 23 years ago a month after she failed to recover from a fall, after a year of dementia (probably alzheimers), after breast cancer, after over 25 years of being a widow, living in an apartment, after over 30 years married on the farm, and 20 more before that on another farm doing the housework so her widowed mother could work the land as she preferred. She was an expert cook, card player and good soul. The middle child of five, she herself had four of whom my father is the 3rd. I didn't know her husband except as an infant, but I don't believe she regretted a thing as hard as everything was. My father is the last of her children alive. The most difficult, I think, of the bunch of them.

My mother's biological mother died 12 years ago, difficult to the end, of breathing and heart issues, with paranoia and personality issues she always had, a firm selfishness that propelled her to make promises she didn't keep, hide problems she probably fostered, and spend money to help my half-uncle that she couldn't have earned until her last career selling door-to-door insurance enriched her. She was a company champion because she couldn't take no for an answer. She took what she needed, especially from her family. I know very little about her early life except I believe she was abused, possibly sexually. She hit her girls, my mother and my aunt, and was in a bad first marriage where two strong but damaged personalities clashed. They divorced in 1951 and my grandfather got custody of the girls, because of the abuse, because of her inability to provide for the girls, and because she cheated on him. He was an alcoholic, but a functional one, especially after his own abusive father passed away. But my grandmother loved her daughters enough to both try to manipulate them against her ex-husband, and to enshrine my mother after she died. But she was kind to me, so I forgave her while not spending much time with her through my life. My mother didn't trust her so neither did I. The 7th child of eleven, she had two daughters and later a son by another husband.

So my last grandmother outlived both these others both in terms of how long she lived and when she died. She grew up on a farm, the 3rd child of five of an alcoholic sharecropper. Her older siblings married young and left, leaving my grandma and her younger brother alone in the Depression with parents scarcely able to care for themselves. Both helped their parents survive until WWII, when the younger brother went to the Pacific and my grandma left for town to get a series of low-paying jobs that she used to continue to help her parents out. But they couldn't make the farm work without the extra labor, so they had to move into town to live with my grandma. At one of her jobs, a factory job, she met my grandfather, who was a mess but knew he needed a good woman, and for once, knew one when he met one. They saw each other for several years before marrying. It was the best thing that happened to my mother and aunt in their teenage lives. Grandma straightened Grandpa out. She took care of her parents, her father passing early in their marriage. By the time I was born in the late 60s, they were a stable couple nearly ready to retire, house paid off and able to socialize with family and old friends. Grandma was still caring for her mother, who was in a retirement home with dementia for more than 5 years before she died. Grandpa retired and asked Grandma to do the same within a few years, so she did, early. But they kept working, saving money, eating well. She took care of her younger brother as his body began to fail from alcoholism. When my mother was dying from a recurrence of breast cancer they were there to help care for her in her last days, though it nearly broke them both. But they kept going.

When Grandpa lost his fishing buddy and quit fishing at 80, Grandma was still in her mid-70s and well. When he died of congestive heart failure at 84, she was devastated but defied his exhortation to sell the house for a good 15 years. She sold it at 93, maybe too late, and moved into an independent living apartment where she mostly did well. But after 9 months she had a blood clot in her leg, and then a stroke. I was prepared to help her so I did, and after being in nursing care for about a year, she moved into assisted living where she lived for a year and a half. Her last two months after that were in Hospice after having an incident with low red blood cell count took her to the hospital where they discovered a UTI and diagnosed terminal delirium. Unhappy, immobilized and unfocussed in nursing care, a week before her passing she returned to the state she was in in the hospital, and declined precipitously, becoming unresponsive and finally passing away.

I think I knew her better than the other grandparents for the simple reason that I knew her as a full adult for far longer than is normal in a grandchild, and I was the only grandchild in the area. She worried about everything and everyone, forgot no debts, and hated dependence. She had a ready smile and a kind heart. After her stroke she often called me "Bud", her little brother's nickname, which I took as a great compliment due to her great love for him. In her deliriums, she called for her dead parents and worried about them. She worried about me too, remembering a small injury that I had but didn't mention but maybe once or twice, and always worrying that something might happen to me to take me from her when she needed me. She was always scared of needing my help.

Nevertheless, like she did throughout her life, I offered it. It made me a better person to provide it. It helped me also to care for my father, who had many surgeries in the last three years of her life as well. As the only child, I had better be better.

We are bound to our parents, but defined by our grandparents.