By Ashley McCuen
Winter 2016 Kaplan Award Winner
I pulled open the front door, and my grandpa stood smiling behind the screen door. We greeted him with enthusiasm, Christmas gifts in hand. “Okay, come on in!” he said to us with a chuckle.
Somehow, he seemed to remain lighthearted at all times. All of the medical drama and emergency situations we had been through these past several months with my grandma hadn’t seemed to faze him much. If anything, they had made him a softer person. Perhaps he expressed his fears and pressures privately.
“Grandma! Hi!” I walked over to where she was sitting on the couch, a bandage on her neck from a recent vascular surgery, her hair tussled as if it hadn’t been combed in a few days, her worn sweatshirt drowning her frail body. A series of small strokes has left her a different person. She doesn’t get up. She doesn’t say much. I hug her gently as a new and permanent pit forms in my stomach. In the past, it was my grandma who rushed to the door when her family came to visit, and it was my grandpa who sat in his easy chair, smiling, waiting for me to come over and say hello. I took note of this change.
* * *
To please a young child in the nineties, it didn’t take much. Scooby Doo marathons and Cocoa Krispies were pretty much all it took for my older brother and me to be giddy. This was what awaited us at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Cartoons and sugary cereals quickly overshadowed the occasional bickering of our grandparents.
In the summer and on school breaks, my brother and I would spend several nights away at my grandparents. They lived about 45 minutes from our home, and yet, it might as well have been another state. I remember us packing the entirety of our bedrooms along with our bikes, big wheels and my baby stroller into the back of my grandpa’s red pickup. What looked like we were shipping out to sea was in reality a short three-night stay.
During one of these stays, I have a vague memory of waking up my grandparents in the middle of the night to play. I was four years old, sleeping in the room next to them. I woke up – it was still dark out – and I marched into their bedroom. Disrupting their sleep, I announced – “Get up!” as I flipped on the light switch in one big diplomatic wave of my arm. Legend has it that I was fully dressed and ready to play the day away. Why was my crinkly-eyed bed-headed grandma not ready to play at this wee dawn hour? She got up anyways though, because that’s what grandmas do.
I used to love watching the way my grandma made a bologna sandwich. It was the closest form of artistry my five-year-old self had witnessed. I would position myself in the wobbly stool at the bar, my grandmother just across from me in the kitchen. Her moves were delicate and smooth. A woman with decades of bologna sandwich making experience. First, she laid out the slices of wheat bread on the cold countertop. A light coat of mayonnaise – I hated the stuff and yet the trance I was in couldn’t be broken to whisper “yuck, Grandma!” A generous squirt of yellow mustard spread onto the non-mayo slice of bread, and I would say a silent prayer in hopes of getting extra mustard. Next, the Kraft single. My eyes followed as she gingerly peeled the cheese off of its coat of plastic wrap. I squinted my eyes, watching as she flawlessly laid the manufactured square piece of cheese onto the equally square piece of bread. Then, it was bologna time – the star of this creation. If you remember a childhood spent peeling that thin, red string off of your bologna, then you had a good childhood. My grandma allowed me the privilege of this act almost every time. Once built, she cut the sandwich down the middle once and then again, creating four perfect squares. My legs swung in excitement, as she slid her masterpiece over to me on a paper towel. Lunch time, little Ashley.
When I was a little older, my grandparents took my brother and me on a trip to Ocean Shores on the coast. I have such fond memories of this trip, although they appear more like a movie montage in my head. I recall singing “Bingo” and “Old MacDonald’s Farm” as we chewed Juicy Fruit in the backseat on the drive there, watching cartoons on the motel bed while my grandma brushed my long hair, fresh from the bath, playing with the beach toys she bought us – blue buckets and orange shovels. I remember the salty wind nipping at my cheeks as I ran across the shore, posing for my grandma’s camera. It’s like scenes from a home movie. And now looking back, I am floored by the generosity my grandma gave me. Even in the department of sand toys.
As the years went on, I always seemed to have a connection with my grandma. We shared similar interests, whether it was our love of reading library books or our love of the handsome Paul Newman. We sparked each other’s interests in conversation. We talked on the phone for long periods of time. Every time we discussed what I was working on in school, she would end the conversation with, “One day, I will visit the library and check out a book with your name on the front.” I blushed and smiled bashfully as all good granddaughters are taught to respond, but I wouldn’t tell her that I lacked the patience to write said novel.
As the youngest grandkid, it was never a secret that I was her favorite. I also am one of only two granddaughters, the other being twenty years older than me. As I grew up, my grandma was relentlessly supportive of my activities and endeavors. Whether it was my seventh grade basketball championship or the school play of Pinocchio where I played the swindling fox, she was there. My first quarter of college, she was also there, contributing to my tuition. To this day, she considers everything I do exceptional and unique. “You’re my star!” she says.
Now, the funny thing about growing older is you become shockingly busy. With a full calendar, a bustling school life and grandparents nearly an hour away, visits have become fewer and far between over the years. Spaghetti and meatball dinners, trips to the bowling alley and backyard beanbag games have fallen through the cracks. Time has slipped by curiously quick. In the hustle of it all, I didn’t consider that change and loss were possible imps creeping around the corner. They weren’t even a speck on my radar.
* * *
We kept our visit short. We looked at family albums. We ate chips. I couldn’t help but think of the last time I visited a few months prior – she had cooked us a fancy dinner and was lamenting the fact that she hadn’t the energy to make holiday cookies as she always did.
“It was good to see you, Grandma,” I said as I kneeled down to hug her goodbye.
“Mmhmm. I just…I’m…”
Hesitation. She looked at me. I looked at her. She was trying to form what she wanted to say. I could tell that not everything was connecting. She stared at me with a deep, quizzical look on her face, her brow slightly wrinkled. I suddenly felt like the adult, and it was one of those rare moments where you feel like you’ve swallowed a planet. I hated this moment.
“I’m glad to see you too,” she said eventually. I could tell there was more she wished to say, but she had submitted to the state of her weakening mind, and allowed a simpler response. I bit my lip to hide any emotion that might trickle out.
The whole way home I couldn’t stop thinking about her blank and puzzled stare. I wish I could’ve helped her get out what she wanted so badly to communicate. I wish she didn’t feel so frustrated at herself. I wish I didn’t feel so helpless.
Since this visit, I have talked to my grandma on the phone a handful of times. We usually can only talk about one thing at a time. She often repeats herself. I go over the top with my cheeriness. She’s begun the last season of her life here, and it’s a hard reality to grip. With these new physical changes and overall weakness, comes loss. It’s that blank stare, that moment where you realize you can’t truly communicate with someone. Suddenly, there’s a roadblock. A barricade neither of you can fix nor change.
I have started to reconcile the fact that life means change, and change sometimes means loss. It means fewer meaningful conversations. It means the fading out of a friendship. When the time comes for what feels like permanent loss, grief will be very real. Yet, it won’t negate what was once there – the kindred relationship, the endless support, the simple memories and shared laughs, the middle of the night play dates and the perfectly cut bologna sandwiches.