My ninety-year-old grandmother is a time traveler now.
She wakes up one day and thinks she’s needed at her aunt’s old house in Jamestown, New York, because the top floor of the farmhouse has to be fixed up to rent. Another day, she might speak of wrangling children in my grandparents’ first house in Cleveland; making Swedish apple pie in Everett, Washington with her Aunt Jenny; or sitting at her dying sister’s bedside in Redding, California. She regales people who visit her with tales about her “recent” cross-country train trip, the one she made right after the end of the Second World War, to escape her crazy mother and sister and marry my grandfather in Ohio; her first-ever trip to Europe, well into her sixties, to visit my aunt stationed in Germany; and her cruise to Alaska, in 1990, from which she returned with a tiny carved bear and an Inuit hood for me, her favorite grandchild.
When her third, awful husband checked out of their marriage following her dementia diagnosis, and she stopped taking her medication for my mother and my aunt, the family decided it was time to see if others might be able to provide her with better, round-the-clock care. In the Alzheimer’s treatment facility where she lives now, Grandma flits from room to room visiting her fellow residents, who are also living in their own times and worlds. My mother and father and aunt, who visit her several times a week, say without surprise that she is popular, even happy there. She especially enjoys the community garden, where she grows vegetables that go to the nursing home kitchen. When her third husband passed away about a year ago, she took all the flowers from his funeral and arranged them into smaller bouquets to decorate her friends’ rooms at the home.
She was well enough to travel with my mother to Washington state for her elder brother’s funeral a couple of years ago. Other than that, she only leaves the home to go out to lunch or shopping with family, or stay with my parents during the holidays. Her world has become rather small, she admits.
Yet, in some ways, it is also larger than it has been in years. I don’t mean to gloss over the sadness, the difficulties of the disease she has, for her or for my family watching it progress. Still, I can see why her mind’s slow decline might well be harder on her children than it is on my grandmother herself. She cannot lay her hands on all of the experiences she has accumulated over the course of her life, and she will continue to lose some of them. But for now, she seems quite content with the ones she is still able to call to mind. Perhaps that’s because most of them seem to be good ones—somehow the worst times, the hardest times, are not the times she finds herself dwelling in now.
When we talk on the phone, she tells me that she is having “forgetful spells.” But these forgetful spells of hers contain so many memories. They are scattered all around her, and when one takes hold of her, it is so close now, so immediate. The basic fact of linear time, chronological experience following experience, doesn’t hold true for my grandmother any longer.
One moment, she sits quietly, as if she doesn’t know where she is or what memory may come to her. The next moment, she finds herself with a person, a place, a time that she hasn’t beheld in years. She doesn’t have to wrack her brain in frustration to recall it; the memory just comes to her easily, like an old friend. She greets it, talks of it to whoever happens to be with her, grasps it tight for a moment, or an hour, or a day, and then, just as easily, lets it go.
*
Like so many people fortunate enough to have a grandparent close by, my childhood was made brighter and infinitely more fun thanks to my grandmother’s influence. Both my parents worked full-time, so I spent many afternoons at her house, along with holidays, weekends, and patches of summer vacation. She taught me things my parents either didn’t know how or didn’t have time to do—like how to plant a vegetable garden, weed a flower bed, sew a buttonhole, can green beans and peaches, make the perfect chocolate-chip cookies, and figure out whodunit on any crime procedural. Thanks to her, I can read a tide book, bait a hook, and (theoretically) sweet-talk my way out of a ticket from Fish & Wildlife if, say, my nonexistent fishing license ever expires, or I ever happen to find myself fishing in a part of the river marked for “conservation only,” or I maybe, just maybe catch over my limit of rainbow trout.
Grandma always made me take a long bath every night, which I hated, but the task was somewhat redeemed when I would emerge to stand on her fuzzy dark green bath mat and cover myself in Johnson’s baby powder until my skin was almost as pale as hers. She held my hands and prayed over every crop of green beans we ever planted, even though she was the exact opposite of religious, and year after year we ended up with an enormous green bean harvest—so many beans we couldn’t can or give them all away. She collected kites, music boxes, china teacups, Swarovski crystal figurines, classic movie musicals. She took me roller-skating for the first time at the age of three, had my palm read at the fair when I was nine, and taught me how to play two-, three-, and four-handed pinochle when we were stuck inside on rainy days. Her TV got all the good channels (all 24 of them), and she pretended not to notice when I jumped on her guest bed, sampled all of her perfumes at once, or nicked her trashy novels and failed to return them. She insisted on buying me my first birth control when I was in high school—a package of condoms that went entirely unused—and I was so mortified by the experience that it was no trouble keeping my promise not to tell my very Catholic parents.
She and her second husband, Ralph, the only one of her three husbands I ever knew as “Grandpa,” took me on vacations so long we lost count of the days. We spent long summer weeks together on the Oregon coast, where we slept in my grandparents’ RV, rode around on garage-sale vintage bicycles, dug for clams on muddy banks, and caught crabs in pots in the choppy waters of the bay. Grandma never failed to walk me to the nearest pay phone every night, so I could call my parents collect and tell them about our adventures.
Once, she and I were walking on the beach together at sunset and saw two teenaged boys chest-deep in the Pacific waves, fishing crabs right out of the crashing high-tide surf. If they can do it, we can do it, Nicole, Grandma declared. And even though I was scared at first, she grabbed my hand and hauled me into the waves up to my waist, then up to my chest—and I never thought it would work, I thought I would freeze or be swept under first—but her hand shot into the waves time and again, reaching for wriggling things I couldn’t even see in the near-dark, and soon we had a plastic grocery sack filled with regulation-size Dungeness crabs that she had plucked right out of the ocean. As we walked back up the beach, shivering and fighting the undertow, she pointed up at the sky and said, her voice rich with satisfaction, I knew it would work. You have to know about the phases of the moon, you see? The tides were on our side tonight.
Tags: family, grandmothers, health, magic, nicole soojung callahan, writing
I like this a lot a lot.
Oh wow, this was amazing.
Wow, this is really similar to my grandmother. It was hard for us to see her lose herself in that way but it was really hard on her emotionally too as she valued her intelligence and sharpness of mind very highly (she was a teacher for most of her life); knowing that she was losing that was bitterly frustrating for her. I’m glad your grandmother seems to be comforted by her memories.
Thank you for sharing–I’m sorry your grandmother also suffered from dementia. I don’t think it’s always easy for Grandma, but she was always feisty and more than a bit temperamental, and if anything age & dementia have mellowed her. It’s still a hard change to see, of course, because she isn’t the same and I know it’s because of the disease. At the same time, I’m really grateful she seems happy right now. I pray she stays that way.
beautiful. you had me with the moon, the tides, and the thrift-store bikes. also, time travel, what a lovely metaphor.
Every time I think about those bicycles–one was red, the other green, like Christmas bikes–I really want to get another vintage bicycle. With a basket.
This is gorgeous. Thank you for writing it.
This was gorgeous, and yay for wonderful grandmothers! and I’m glad yours is relatively happy where she is.
Saturday would have been my grandma’s 75th birthday, we lost her a few years ago to breast cancer that moved to her lungs after her mastectomy. She decided that she was done with treatments, and let it take her.
She was an amazing woman, who once declared herself Cruise Director of jury duty. She grew weed in the bathroom in the 70’s, “to see what effect it would have on [her] kids.” She’d been a mom and housewife during the Summer of Love in San Francisco, and always felt like she’d missed out. She read our tea leaves in dim sum restaurants, and bought me a pack of tarot cards for my 13th birthday. For my 16th, she bought me a floor-length, slinky black velvet dress, and a black velvet jacket with GOBS of marabou trim, because if I was going to insist on dressing all in black, I was going to be FABULOUS while doing it, dammit.
From her I didn’t really learn any physical skills, but I did learn all the people skills I could ever want. She was one of those women who could take control of a room in nothing flat, and they’d thank her for it. When I try, I can manage about one tenth of her sparkle and charm. She taught me how to play the politics games at school and work, and how to sweetly tell people to fuck off, without them ever realizing it. And whenever any of us were around, she’d go out of her way to tell us how beautiful and smart and completely wonderful we all are, even if we couldn’t see it ourselves. Especially then. And if there’s one thing of her’s that I try to emulate, it’s that.
(Again, gorgeous piece, and I didn’t mean to unload about my own grandma, I just got caught up in all the feels.)
I loved reading this comment; thank you for sharing about your grandma! I’m sorry for your loss.
This made me laugh, a lot: “how to sweetly tell people to fuck off, without them ever realizing it”
–although when MY grandmother tells people to fuck off, there’s nothing sweet or subtle about it.
Beautiful post, Nikki.
<3 thanks, Rachel.
This is really great. I work with people with dementia in long-term care settings. It is so, so important for families to just BE with the person, wherever and whenever they may be at the moment. Depending on the person’s abilities, by asking a few simple questions or even just encouraging them to go on you can get the most amazing tidbits and stories. I like the metaphor of time traveler for this – people with dementia mine through the treasures of their memories and experiences, and it is such a gift to share it with them.
I do music therapy with a few groups of women in an assisted living facility, and the memories that a song can bring up are amazing. Last week “You Are My Sunshine” was followed by “That’s the song I sang when I came out of my coma!” (there had been no previous mentions of comas)
I’m so glad my grandma has both my mom and my aunt close by. I wish I could visit her more often; I live across the country, and it’s hard to get home. I hear a lot of her stories secondhand from my family. They’re hearing about people they haven’t even thought about in ages.
My grandmother’s memories from long ago seem almost unnaturally sharp. She often has trouble recalling what she did yesterday.
This is sad and lovely and hopeful, and now I have to go away and cry a little bit, but in a grateful way.
She doesn’t have to wrack her brain in frustration to recall it; the memory just comes to her easily, like an old friend. She greets it, talks of it to whoever happens to be with her, grasps it tight for a moment, or an hour, or a day, and then, just as easily, lets it go.
So, so beautiful.
Oh, this is beautiful. Over the weekend I got a bunch of spam from my dad’s mother’s email address (she died in 2011), so I’m having a lot of Grandmother Feelings lately. I have one grandparent left and I’m going to call her tonight.
<3 I’m glad to hear it; I hope you had a good chat.
Just wanted to repeat what everyone above has said: this is wonderful.
Powerful, evocative writing, Nicole. So glad you are preserving the richness of your grandmother’s stories. Thank you.
thank you, Maureen!
delurking just to say: this is wonderful – and I am just recently dealing with my own grandmother’s beginnings of dementia, so it was perfectly timed. thank you for writing and sharing with us.
I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother’s dementia. You said it was just beginning; I hope you have many good years remaining with her. I thought my grandma’s diagnosis was the end of the good times, but strangely it hasn’t been, as hard as it is. Thank you for reading!
as of right now, her lucid days way outnumber her rougher ones, though she is becoming more and more confused. interestingly enough, she seems happier this way: during her confused, “bad” days, the things she remembers/thinks have been happening make her happier than the reality actually is. as an example, one of her sons went to visit, and she later told my mother that an entire other branch of the family had been there too. (they hadn’t, but she was just so pleased.)
This happens with my grandma, too. The only time it seems to bother her is when she believes there is something she needs to be doing–like going to see someone she promised to visit. I’m glad she’s been mostly recalling the good times, and the people she loves the most.
Oh, my. This is pulling up so many Feels. I’m getting married next spring and am having a very hard time coming to terms with the fact that my great-uncle (for all intents and purposes my grandfather) will not be able to make the trip from Ireland to see it, and in fact, does not often remember me on the phone anymore.
It does help to hear him talk about his mother and sister (my great grandmother and grandmother, for whom he mistakes his wife) and hear how much comfort he gets from their “presence.” I can only hope this isn’t as awful for him as it is for the rest of us.
Brb, crying at my desk now. Hopefully done before my next patient shows up.
I’m sorry you’re going through this with your great-uncle. My grandmother couldn’t remember my name or the names of my kids for a short period, but her medication helped and she knows who we are now. I hope you’re able to visit your uncle after your wedding.
I was the first person my grandfather forgot.
I wish my grandfather’s dementia had been, at any point, like your grandmother’s is. I’m truly, so, so happy for you that it is, because as hard as this is, and I honestly know how hard it is, seeing them unhappy or scared or angry is the worst part. It sounds as though your grandmother is a gorgeously unique woman who is very used to doing everything her way, and Alzheimers is going to have to toe the line as well. 🙂 Thank you for writing this, I love it, sincerely.
Thank you for this comment. I’m sorry that you’ve gone through this and worse with your grandfather. I think everyone in my family lives in fear of the day my grandmother’s dementia plays out in a far worse way. And we know that it can, and that it might. Which is why I’m so grateful she’s content right now–I know it could change at any time.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing!
Aw, grandmas.
This was such a lovely story. I consider myself lucky to still have all four of my grandparents in my life; you've inspired me to go home and write to them.
Someone’s chopping onions in here, dammit.
(blows nose)
Thank you for this comment. I'm sorry that you've gone through this and worse with your grandfather. I think everyone in my family lives in fear of the day my grandmother's dementia plays out in a far worse way. And we know that it can, and that it might. Which is why I'm so grateful she's content right now–I know it could change at any time.
Thanks for sharing this. My grandfather was also a time traveler (love that metaphor — it’s perfect), and I was fortunate enough to live nearby for all but the last 2 years of his life. It was intensely painful and intensely beautiful to watch him over the years, and to watch my wonderful grandmother lose her best friend. They both died 14 years ago, but not a day passes that I don’t think of them — I was just telling some of my grandfather’s stories to my almost-4-year-old (the ones he had on an infinite loop toward the end). They were the best people I’ve ever known, and I am so happy for you that you’re able to see your grandmother’s life in this way.
I’m sorry about your grandparents, but I’m glad you lived so close by for so many years! Like you, I find myself telling my daughters all about their great-grandma and the adventures we had together. I can tell they’re impressed. My kids also have wonderful grandparents; however, it would be tough to compete with mine on the zero-to-Auntie Mame scale of delightfully wild relatives.
When my mother told me about Grandma’s memories surfacing, different ones every day, the first thing I thought was “these are like time jumps.” I think it would be lonely for her without people to share them with. She has fewer of them now that she’s on new medication–on good days, she is much more present in the here and now. But I think her memories from long ago are still sharper and more real to her than what she did yesterday.
I'm sorry about your grandparents, but I'm glad you lived so close by for so many years! Like you, I find myself telling my daughters all about their great-grandma and the adventures we had together. I can tell they're impressed. My kids also have wonderful grandparents; however, it would be tough to compete with mine on the zero-to-Auntie Mame scale of delightfully wild relatives.
When my mother told me about Grandma's memories surfacing, different ones every day, the first thing I thought was "these are like time jumps." I think it would be lonely for her without people to share them with. She has fewer of them now that she's on new medication–on good days, she is much more present in the here and now. But I think her memories from long ago are still sharper and more real to her than what she did yesterday.
This happens with my grandma, too. The only time it seems to bother her is when she believes there is something she needs to be doing–like going to see someone she promised to visit. I'm glad she's been mostly recalling the good times, and the people she loves the most.
I'm glad! You are very lucky. 🙂
<3 I'm glad to hear it; I hope you had a good chat.
I’m a first-time grandmother to a precious 10-month-old baby boy, born to my stepson. I’m no longer with his father.
I’m not very brave and I have a black thumb, but I pray that I can teach this little boy how to appreciate the beauty of nature, the value of old things, the importance of being kind and generous, of always standing up for what’s right.
You wrote a lovely tribute to your grandmother, and I thank you for giving me hope that there’s value in the little things too: A warm bath, a snuggly session with a book., of letting a little one jump on a bed.
I pray that your grandmother and family find peace.
Thank you, Nancy. Sounds like that baby boy is lucky to have you!
Thank you, Nancy. Sounds like that baby boy is lucky to have you!
Reading this piece when it was first published meant a lot to me- I remember trying to talk to my grandma about how this frame of thinking about Grandpa’s Alzheimer’s was helpful to me. Starting there opened up a larger and very difficult conversation about how difficult it was for her to experience the progression of his disease. They had a codependent symbiotic relationship which was at times difficult to understand as loving- but it was the life boat they both devoted themselves to for 70 years.
Reading this again, six months after both of my grandparents died (four days parts!) and so close to the end of The Toast, has really reminded me of how heartfelt and deeply meaningful both my relationship with them and reading The Toast has been for me.
TLDR; thanks for the years of good stuff