If it was 10 A.M. on a Sunday, there’s a good chance I knew where Grandma Willett was. As like many weeks before, she was rising from a pew at St. Cornelius and beginning a morning mass. The priest would be walking toward the altar while shaking hands. It was something predictable about her, even as I grew old enough to join the rest of my family there. Sometimes I’d stand with her, other times shuffling through donation slips and conventional black bibles. However, one thing was true. Dad would be there telling me not to laugh at Grandma singing.
Legend has it that she used to be a good singer. Outside of it just being a higher pitch, there was no reason to believe what she was doing was bad. Still, she was one of those who was active in the parish, having spent many of those Sundays reading a responsorial psalm and helping with communion. She was once someone who sang with the choir. I’m unsure if she could be called ubiquitous with the church, but there was a familiarity and comfortable recognition in being there. If I behaved well enough, we got donuts from the nearby lunch patio for the middle school, and talked with other families. If you played your cards right, you’d even be able to see priests and nuns wandering around, partaking in their free time until noon mass.
I think that I start here because it’s the most vivid image that comes to mind when thinking of her. She was someone dedicated to her faith, reliable if one asked for her services. She was so devoted that I once went to see The Passion of the Christ (2004) with her solely because it was about Jesus and that was the thing to do at the time. Even if there was a mystique about her that made me feel disconnected on a variety of other things, there was still affection there.
In some ways, her home is a perfect example of how consistent the final stretch of their life was. Ever since I was a child, I would arrive and notice the same cabinet backed onto the wall. Next to various wooden religious artifacts and photographs giving clues to her past, there was this place that was a time capsule to another time. When I was younger, the bottom shelf would be pulled out to discover copies of recorded VHS tapes of films like Pete’s Dragon (1977) and Star Wars (1977). Maybe there was a collection of religious tales told through gloriously dated 90s animation. While that shelf has gone missing, the display case on the side hasn’t, giving a brief glimpse into other VHS tapes I doubt they’ve watched in 15 years, like A Mighty Wind (2003). Similar to old almanacs and fragile copies of Louisa May Alcott books in her room, there was something distant about her home. In fact, the only thing that ever changed on that cabinet was the TV set, though the headache that came with helping her learn the commands is the second-most predictable part of her life.
As the years went on, that home would be a familiar landscape. There were times in middle school when she’d babysit for an afternoon. Later in high school, I was a 15 minute walk away and would spend a fair amount of afternoons lounging in the chair that, as of this writing, is probably still sitting there. Every now and then she would be by the backdoor talking to the neighborhood cats, calling them Kiki, doing her best to not lose her temper at telemarketing calls. She was more patient when it came to strangers, though dealing with the transgressions of my grandfather was more comical and frequent, especially around the holidays when they were in charge of preparing dinner.
In fact, that was the last significant time that I had seen her. As she grew older and mobility became more of a struggle, we would have Christmas at our house. It was December 2021 and by then she was living in a nursing home. Along with other physical ailments, her mental health had been on the decline for years. Given the correlating COVID-19 pandemic, there was a constant fear of her contracting and going quick. The idea of getting phone calls that she was moved around the hospital was especially alarming no matter how mundane they eventually became. It’s the type of reality that made the maneuvering of this event all the more special. It wouldn’t be a big event. She still needed to be dropped back off at a reasonable hour, but for this last time, we’d celebrate the holidays together.
As usual, basketball was on. She’d sit in her walker surrounded by family. A few presents would be open and, as been tradition since I was little at least, we’d hold up the gift for all to see. If it was goofy looking enough, we’d pass it around to let others observe. Sure, this meant focusing on one thing was chaotic, but it was a festive gathering. The one silver lining is that Christmas 2021 had gone better than the previous year, if just because of no lapse in judgment from Grandma. Sure, it was also the day where we collectively discovered that Grandpa was moving into more intensive care, but otherwise it was a joyful day and a decent way to have said goodbye.
It's maybe the part that’s most ambiguous about the upcoming Fall. What will Christmas look like without my dad driving over to pick her up? Will there be any occasion really to cook up a big dinner now that it’s the same group we see every week? It’s hard to say, but things will reveal themselves as time slowly approaches.
As crass as it sounds, there is some relief to know that her pain is at an end. I could only imagine what spending the final years of one’s life in and out of a hospital would be like. It must require some deep-seated faith that I’m sure she carried with her until the end. Even then, there is something stark about the day of cleaning out her nursing home room that she had for years. Even in the sparseness seeing it empty out created a reality that it was happening. This was the end of a long and fulfilling life. It was also the end of her health struggles, the continual codependence on others that I’m sure bothered her. Even in humbleness, there was a sense that she liked helping others, seeing them happy, so relying on others to drive her to and from appointments probably hurt even if it reminded her how much her son loved her, sacrificing so much in the hopes that this would be the cure.
I wish that I had more vivid memories of her, but they’re all mostly fragments. Grandpa was often the more colorful and lively character. There was a prodding he’d provide that kept her life interesting. She was predictable, putting on Grand Ol Opry-style programs on the radio in the afternoon and finding church services on TV to fill that itch. Even as she became more domestic, she kept those passions alive. I wish there were ways I could expand on the story of when she took a trip to Australia, or of her childhood in Larchwood, SD. For the most part, those would be secondhand and not genuine memories. What I remember are days where I would be sick and she would bring out towels and soup, hoping I’d get over whatever bug I had. I remember her in church or gossiping about her neighbors that lived alongside her across from a park. I suppose the best that can be said is that even as old age played its dirty tricks, she never embraced a bitterness that made her off-putting. She was always willing to listen and be grateful for company, recognizing the worth of you visiting her.
Though I do know the one story of hers that she loved to share sporadically over the years. It’s one that seemed to pop up when anyone told a story that had a remnant of similarity. She spoke of a time when she was babysitting me as a very young kid. Like kids are wont to do, I was annoying my sister because she was annoying or something. All of the sudden, she begins crying and causes a commotion. While this would be told with a stricter tone, there was something of humor in her sharing her favorite part. As my sister cried, Grandma recalled my response to deescalate the situation:
“It’s okay. Don’t you know I love you?”
Something about this exchange just tickled her for decades, making her want to share it whenever possible. Maybe it was the abruptness with how I tried to resolve the situation, or maybe the wording just caught her off guard. Whatever it was, something about “don’t you know I love you?” made her laugh.
I suppose that much is true to her as well. Those years of her taking care of me, giving me shelter after school and connecting me to a world far distant from my own. I think of those holidays together, of sitting around and laughing. Dad would egg her on to tell stories from the past and suddenly the world seemed greater. Grandpa would say an obfuscating remark and she’d have no choice but to retort. In her small way, she was there keeping her voice heard. Even if I don’t believe that she was a great singer, there are those who believe she was. I have no choice now but to listen and hopefully believe it for myself.
But I’ll end the way that every get-together usually did, whether it was at home or church. Predictably, everything would end and it would be time to move on to the next engagement. While you could get away with shaking Grandpa’s hand, Grandma was someone you had to hug. It was almost taboo not to. It’s probably the last thing I did with her, patting her back and letting her know that I enjoyed her company. We may have not had a lot in common, but we made the most of it. I only hope whoever sings the song next will do her justice because she deserves it. She did so much and her praises deserve to be sung no matter how loud or perceptively off-key I imagine it to be.
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