Over Spring Break, we took a trip to PA to see my parents and my Grammy Bear who is in a nursing home. Since we’ve been back I’ve been thinking a lot about Grandma and reflecting on her life and some of the ways she’s been formative for me.

A few weeks ago, I saw her, small and frail; sad and confused; weepy and looking for comfort in holding my hand. Some days she was absent from where we all were – she wasn’t sure which reality she was living. The last day I saw her, she was lucid. She smiled at me, talked to me, and told me she loved me. As I looked into her beautiful green eyes, I saw traces of the Grandma of my youth.

She was always tough. When I was young, she blew smoke halos for my sister and me…until the doctor told her that if she didn’t quit smoking she would someday die. She never smoked one cigarette after that day. She’s had so many surgeries that we’ve taken to calling her the bionic woman. She had her femoral arteries replaced before I was even old enough to know. She had her carotid artery cleaned out when I was a teenager. In her 70’s she had double-bypass, a valve replacement, and two knee replacements. Each time, she faced the struggle with courage and strength that marveled me. I was with her when the doctor came in to tell her she needed heart surgery. She said, “Let’s do it tomorrow.”

When she would come and stay with us, I used to help her wash her back at night. Years of arthritis made it hard for her to get in and out of the tub, so she sponged bathed at night – or as she liked to joke, she took “whore baths”. I’ve never really understood what she meant by that, but I like it just the same. One evening, after she and Pap had moved to PA to be near us, I was visiting her and she said “Hey Maroush, wanna help me wash?” So I stood behind her in her little bathroom, looking at her reflection in the mirror in front of us. It’s an image that is forever seared in my mind’s eye. She was old. Her body was hunched over. Her nakedness betrayed the voluptuous figure she once possessed. But, it was her face that captivated me. I watched as she rubbed the wash cloth gently across her beautiful skin (carefully sheltered from the sun for years). She possessed delicate wrinkles that only made her more beautiful. In her aged face, I saw a beauty and grace that could only belong to a woman who had survived years of struggle, heart-ache, abuse, and misery. Yet, she smiled often. She joked. She laughed. But, deep inside I saw her as a woman who was full of the kinds of contradictions that only a woman could possess. It made her more beautiful to me than I had ever seen her before.

She’s the lady who taught me how to make potato salad – and I still marvel at how, somehow, the scalding hot potatoes didn’t seem to burn her fingers as we peeled. I tried to be tough, and peel along with her…but I went slowly, hoping that she would get to them before I did, because it hurt my young fingers so darn badly! She taught me how to pull the strings off of the celery before I chopped it (so it was easier for Pap to chew!)

I remember as a young girl being amazed that she could lift a huge pot roast out of the oven…and today the smell of baking potatoes, onions, carrots, and beef remind me of her dark kitchen in Eastlake.

As I sat at her side a few weeks ago, there was hardly a remnant of this strong, valiant woman. Yet, in her suffering, she possesses dignity. We’ve helped her a lot over the last few years. Made her eat when she fought depression. Grieved with her after Pap’s death, even though maybe it didn’t make sense to us that after 50 years of living with an abusive alcoholic should could walk up to his casket and say “Good-bye my dear husband.” Maybe man-hating feminists would call that false consciousness, but I call it an act of love that embodies Christ’s forgiving love for us. I learned a lot from her in that one simple moment.

I realize that I’m blessed to have experienced inter-generational living and treasure the memories of bouncing back to my parents family room on weekends from college and hearing Gram say “Hi-ya!” as she watched the Game Show Network.

I’ve experienced the irony of life as I’ve helped Gram take baths and realize fully the circle that has gone around since she used to give me baths 20 years ago.

So, I see her lie in her nursing home bed, small, frail; broken; sad; the last of her siblings to be alive; confused about when and where she lives. And while I am sad for her, I am blessed by her dignity, her faith, her strength to go on through so much. I’m overwhelmed at all she’s conquered in her 83 years. I’m struck by how beautiful she is.

This is a picture of her that I took about 10 years ago. It’s how I want to remember her forever.