A tender heart.
So I need to interrupt the travelogue entries for a second to thank Rae and Niki and Jami for their support on the phone yesterday. I got an emergency call at work to come to the hospital because my grandmother was rushed to the ER and then Intensive Care. She had collapsed in the bathroom and split her head open on the toilet during the night. When I arrived, she seemed ok except for the gash, but as has increasingly become the case lately, she was very disoriented. It's become common that she'll ask us the same question 10 times in a row in the space of 10 minutes. Yesterday, she didn't know where she was or much of what had happened. She kept trying to get out of bed to get her slippers from "downstairs" or to cook us some food. As usual, she'd laugh jovially when we'd remind her that she's in the hospital and she can't go "downstairs" or get out of bed.
Then her heart stopped.
I had just gotten up from my chair to go back to work for the afternoon since she seemed safe now. But with the commotion of trying to explain where I was going, her numbers on the heart monitor started to plummet. She suddenly went blank-faced with a far-off stare and then slight convulsions. I froze. My mother started to call to her frantically. Then she took hold of her shoulders. My grandpa started to desperately call for help.
The seconds passed in small eternities.
I was watching my grandmother die in front of me. My insides tied in knots. She had always been so healthy and happy. At 76, she had never had a surgery or any major health issues. And she had always been so appreciative of that fact. She'd recall stories of growing up as a girl in Latvia and Poland and Germany, on the run from the Russians in WWII. Her heartbreaking stories of desperate times and hunger and fear explained why she was such a happy person now. She would laugh and laugh when she told us how she saw a pie for the first time when she was thirteen and had been sponsored to come to America. She'd hold her belly and demonstrate how sick she had made herself when she excitedly ate the whole thing. In America she could find work and clothes and sponsor her whole family to come to the states and settle in the German haven of Milwaukee. Every day here was a repreive for her. A gift.
Rarely, when asked, she would recount with tears in her eyes, the war stories of how her mother had set up a noose in the barn where they were hiding so that she and the two girls could hang themselves before the Russian soldiers could rape them if they were found. How her father was captured and shipped off to work camps in Siberia. And how she witnessed other atrocities to heinous for me to mention here. But these things fostered a kindness and positivity in her so tender and encouraging that you'd think she'd never had an unhappy day. In her mind, no troubles she faced now could ever come close to those she saw and faced in the war. And she passed along that positive attitude to her daughter and then to me.
When I was young, with working parents, she took care of me after school, playing games and singing songs. Recently, her mind has started deteriorating, and she knows it, but she only laughs. Nothing can change her warm-hearted spirit.
Nothing but her heart itself.
Before the tears had a chance to well up in my eyes, the shouting and shaking to bring my grandmother back to us had started to quiet down. Her frozen heart had started to beat once more. In that crowded ICU, her heart would have three more episodes that day. Each time, no one knew if she would come back to us.
She was informed that what she needed was a pacemaker to restart her heart when it stops and sputters. We're unsure what she could understand but she knew that she was going to have surgery that day. Increasingly, she fidgeted with kleenex and tugged at her wires and tried to climb out of bed as her nerves reverted her to a scared child. When they came to wheel her bed away, she pleaded for her husband to crawl into the hospital bed with her. As she was leaving, she murmured that she didn't know where they were taking her and then looked ready to cry. My mother could no longer fight back the tears.
Growing older comes with so much pain. We try to forget the course we're on by distracting ourselves with a spouse and children and grandchildren. We fill our lives with as much love as we can handle. We give our hearts until they wear out.
But even the most positive attitude can't spare us from our own frailties. After the surgery, my grandmother was in much better spirits. When reassured that the surgery was over and that no, she didn't have to have another one... she laughed, "well, that was nothing!" My grandmother was back. Even surgery on her heart was easy. She was so happy and thankful to God and the doctors and nurses. Like a child, we reassured her that she needed to stay in bed or she would have gotten up and walked right home. When I kissed her and left for the evening, she waved with the brightest smile... happy for the gift of another day. And the happiness that she taught me could no longer keep my tears at bay.
Posted by heydomsar
2006-06-23
go back | random brainstorm | go forth
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