#335 Grandma

My mother just called to tell me that my grandmother’s care givers have recommended hospice care for her.




My grandmother is 93 years old and has always been feisty and active. Up until a few years ago she was splitting her time between NY and Florida, enjoying Broadway shows, films and golf. She always had a big group of friends and played cards and Mah Jong.



She’s gradually been slowing down and a fall resulting in a broken hip and a prolonged hospital stay with pneumonia convinced her it was time to give up her apartment. She moved to Savannah to be closer to my parents and went into an assisted living facility. She quickly gained a whole new circle of friends and continued watching movies, playing cards and generally being the leader of the pack. She just has that kind of personality. She was president of her college class for all four years. She has magnetism.



She has been in and out of the hospital this past year with a multi-drug resistant pneumonia. She just got home about a week ago and seems to have lost her spirit. She won’t get dressed or go down to meals or even open her eyes sometimes.



This doesn’t seem like the woman who told my husband he’d better be able to keep me in the style to which I’d become accustomed before we got married. Or the woman who advised my actor friends to switch careers so they could actually make money. Or the woman who would ask me every time I came home from a volunteer shift at the hospital if I’d met a doctor to marry so I wouldn’t “have” to go to medical school. Or in my favorite story, the woman who told her future husband as he proposed that she had such big hands she’d just have to have a bigger ring.



I’ve seen pictures of my grandmother from that time and she was truly glamorous. Her clothes, her hair, her face, she was stunning. She still is although I could do without the track suits….



She’s 93 and lived a full life, but still this is hitting us all hard. I guess it’s good that Eric doesn’t have to go through this, but I know he’d want to be there with us. And I know she’d want him there too.