The World Keeps Turning

What a busy, busy time it's been! And a happy one! And a sad one.

Busy, first: The holidays always seem to hit me all at once and suddenly I have to buy lots of little presents for my parents and sister, a few for other friends and my babysitting kids, as well as 4 large presents for Adam, Jon, Mike and Sarah. I also have school, which I have year-round, but that extra time seems so precious at this time of year. My babysitting schedule is on fire and my etsy shop is picking up steam, too. Plus, I have a craft show the 2nd week of December and I'm trying to make new cards and repackage old ones. Jon's dad is coming to town in mid-December so we're trying to tidy the house and schedule carpet cleanings, so he doesn't think know that we're slobs. Don't forget work 8-5 everyday and all those errands that just come with being a grown-up. Whew! I'm pooped just thinking about everything I have to do.

Most of those things are great, though. I like being busy and having a full planner. I love spending time with my babysitting boys and making cards is obviously something I enjoy as well! I'm even starting to get back into knitting. By back into it, I mean that I briefly learned how to do it last year and then promptly got discouraged and stopped. However, last Sunday Jon and I went to an event called the Hella Hipster Hoedown at the Urban Craft Center in Santa Monica. There was music, free screenprinting, craft booths, and... a knitting crash course! So, we did that and got totally caught up in it (we were late for my mom's birthday dinner) and before we left Jon bought a set of needles and yarn. Which led to last night, where we're sitting in the living room watching our Monday shows (House and Heroes of course) and Jon is totally knitting while watching tv. I was so proud of him; such an enlightened boy. I wish I had taken pictures, though.

Now for the sad: last year, around Labor day, my grandma Annie found that her breast cancer (previously in remission) has metastasized to her brain. We set her up for treatment and took away her car keys. That was the angriest I've ever seen her. The medicine she was on, however, could cause seizures and we felt it was safer if she wasn't driving. Annie was so independent though and I think we may have broken her spirit a bit when we did that.

On Halloween, after weeks of radiation therapy and optimism, we found out that it had further metastasized and there were now 16 inoperable tumors along her spine. She was not very clear-minded most of the time by this point so it was up to my dad and I to make her treatment decisions.

That's an important point: my grandfather, while incredibly intelligent, had no experience with practical matters like grocery shopping or paying bills, so he was out of the question as her decision-maker. My mom and sister were very helpful during this time, shuttling Annie to bingo games and CVS, cleaning up her house so we could fit the hospital bed, etc. But it was my dad and I who were there everyday and it was I who he talked to about what we should do. I became an expert on Medicare coverage, hospice plans, and her treatment.

After we found out about the tumors along her spine, we decided that she should continue on her treatment in the hopes that she could get better enough to come home and go play bingo. When she was lucid, that was all she wanted to do. The week before Thanksgiving, we decided to enter hospice care and to take Annie home. We set up a 24 hour home health aide to live with her and we bought tons of supplies. She came home on the Friday before Thanksgiving. My mom's birthday was on Sunday and I still feel badly that we didn't do much to celebrate it. On Monday, Annie died in her living room with my grandpa, dad, her nurse and I around her. My mom and sister would arrive about 10 minutes later. 

I've lost loved ones, but I had never watched someone die. It's peaceful and violent at the same time. Most of all, it's incredibly sad. Dying at home adds more strangeness to the story because I then had to call the Fire Department to come and verify the DNR and to make sure there was no foul play. I had to call her doctor who spoke to the firemen and told them this was expected. Lastly, I had a surreal conversation with the funeral director where they basically had me fill out the death certificate over the phone. It was a rehash of her life while I sat next to her lifeless body.

Because she died the Monday before Thanksgiving, we had to wait an entire week for the service. That time in between was a morbid mix of preparing for Thanksgiving while writing obituaries, planning headstones, sending announcements and notifying neighbors.

Today is one year since she died. In a few minutes, it will be exactly one year. This Thanksgiving will be easier than last, but I know it will always be strange to gather as a family without her.

Yesterday, my good friend Kristine called me and as soon as I picked up the phone, I knew that her grandpa had died. She held it together on the phone and said she just wanted to let me know. We talked a bit about how unhappy her boss was about this timing (she works in retail) and then we hung up. I knew she was home with her family and I felt like I had to do something. I went to Trader Joe's and Barnes and Noble to get her flowers and a distraction basket filled with cookies and candies and books. When I took it to her house, we kept crying and hugging, crying and hugging. So often, "I know how you feel" is an empty phrase, uttered by people who don't know what else to say. But I did know and she knew that and I think it made her feel a little better.

So, today my dad and I will work, like every other day. At lunch time, after we go to the bank and the post office, we will go to the cemetery and leave a white rose each for my grandma and my uncle - just two rows apart. And tonight, we will go Christmas shopping. Because the world keeps turning.

Pictures:

My babysitting boys supporting their team!

My grandpa, grandma, myself, and my sister at Carlsbad Caverns in 1995 or so.

My grandma and John Wayne - she kept that picture in her purse for 40 years.

Annie in her 20s.

Annie at my sister's graduation in 2007.

Something's Not Right

{Via Audrey Hepburn Complex}

Last year, in July, my grandmother would stop by the office/garage everyday on her way out of the neighborhood. This was normal. She complained about feeling badly and forgetting things. This was not. We would say, "Annie, it's normal, you're getting older. Are you taking your Aricept everyday?" She was insistent that it wasn't just that. She would get riled up and say,"There's something wrong with me!" At the time, we just thought it was a normal, inevitable progression. But she knew something wasn't right.

It wasn't until 2 months later, right after her 81st birthday, around Labor Day, that we found out something wasn't right. She was a breast cancer survivor, in remission for 2 years, but last year it metstasized to her brain. She wasn't forgetting things because she was getting old, she was forgetting things because there was an intruder. And she knew it. And we doubted her. I replay that in my head sometimes and wish I hadn't brushed away her fears like they were unimportant.

I am going to write more about Annie in a few weeks - part 2 of my Tale of Two Grandmas. Today, I wanted to make a point that we should all pay attention to our bodies. If you feel that something isn't right, take care of it. Trust yourself.

Lately, I've been forgetting strange things. Which toothbrush is mine. My dad's cell phone number. My address. Today, I flashed my brights when I was trying to turn on my windshield wipers. I'm not assuming I have a brain tumor, but something is wrong. Maybe it's as simple as stress or lack of sleep, but those are still important things that can affect my quality of life.

I'll be fine. But that's because I'm going to start paying attention and acting on what I feel. Like my yoga teacher, Sharkee, used to say, "Listen to your body; it will tell you everything you need to know."

A Tale of Two Grandmas: Part One

When I was 13 or 14, I went through a phase where I woke up every morning around 4am. No one else in my house was awake and though sometimes I would read, I would usually watch TV. Reruns of Small Wonder (the '80s show about the robot daughter?), Charles in Charge and Out of This World were the usual fare.

My grandma Edie also used to wake up early and it had come up that she would watch these same shows occasionally. Sometimes, I would call her and whisper about what was happening on the show we were both watching. It was nice to feel a connection with somebody - 4 am can be a very lonely time, even in a house full of people.

Edie was good at connections. She was the cake-baking, gift-giving, movie-watching, pool-splashing grandma. She was affectionate and talkative and interested. Every once in a while, I will taste something and be transported back to Grandma's house. A Christmas cookie, a chocolate cake, eggs and toast made a certain way. Once, at a garage sale, I glimpsed a sliver of aqua patterned dishes and was back in her red and black kitchen.

You know those magnets that say, "Only left handed people are in their right minds"? She had one on her fridge. Reader's Digest? On the bar. She got me a subscription 6 months before she died and its arrival every month was like a reminder that my reading partner was gone. She had light blue leather couches and a glass coffee table that probably induced panic attacks in my mother whenever we were near it. She decorated seasonally - eggs, chicks and bunnies for Easter; ice-skating snowmen, polar bears with Cokes and handmade ornaments for Christmas.

Grandma Edie had a waterbed that my sister and I used as a bouncehouse. She had gold satin sheets on said bed, which lended themselves nicely to games of princess and house and spaceship. Her mirrored closet doors took up an entire wall and were angled perfectly so that Grandma could see us even from the living room. Looking back, it's clear that we had no perception of privacy - I remember rummaging through her nightstand and jewelry armoire looking for whatever I could use to dress up.

My favorite parts of Grandma's house were the glass cases filled with china, glass, and porcelain. I always liked what I called "soap and water cleaning" as opposed to vacuuming or straightening. So, when I came over, Grandma would have paper towels, newspaper and windex ready for me and I would go to town. She had these porcelain dolls that were each associated with a season. i made up stories about them and gave them biographies and personalities.

She had an Avon room, with a big dresser filled with all the goodies she had ordered. We were allowed to look through all the gold and black boxes and find things we liked. The Avon room had Grandpa's hospital bed in it - basically a rollercoaster for little girls. That bed always had layers and layers of afghans on it - it was like a tactile technicolor explosion.

Next to the Avon room was the craft room - in a previous time, this was Scottie's room (Scottie being my great-grandmother, Edie's mother). Since Scottie had died, the room had been taken over by my grandma's creativity. There was a craft table in the middle where she made these little sculptures. Maybe it was like sculpey, because she would bake them and then paint them. There were little bears and bunnies and cats. Oh, but the caterpillars were my favorite! They could be green or purple or wearing Santa hats. Along the walls were bins of yarn and glue, glitter and clay, paint and canvas. Because yes, she painted, too!

My best friend, Amy, got to know my grandmother when she accompanied us on weekend visits. They were both creative, funny, and smart and they were fond of each other. Once, Amy and I noticed that Edie's car was filthy - she hadn't driven it lately and she couldn't wash it herself. So we did! We dug through my Grandpa's old shed and found ancient soap and some rags and we spent a really lovely afternoon cleaning that car.

When I was 16, she was given the opportunity to have a dangerous operation or to live with a condition that may have taken her life at any moment. She decided that living her life in fear that it might end was not the right choice for her, so she opted for the surgery. She survived, but died of complications shortly thereafter. I was told early in the morning and opted to go to school. Amy was the first person I told and I remember we had a late start that day (school didn't start until 8:50am), so we went to Ihop. That Ihop is now a bank, something that makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Grandmas are very important figures in the lives of little girls. Mine taught me that one woman can give up a child for adoption, love the same man for 30 years and bury him 14 years too early, work in a factory, write secret poetry and escape a hard life for a better one. She taught me that women can do anything- that I could do anything.