Niklas' blog

Grandma on Friday; I'm holding an old picture of her

Yesterday at 16:08 my sister called me to say our beloved grandmother Adele had passed away.

On Saturday she was rushed to the hospital as she was feeling really bad. She was feeling slightly better on Sunday and on Monday doctors could say her blood-tests were looking good.

In the Tuesday morning she suffered a minor cardiac infarction but stabilised fairly. Dad gathered the gossip magazines that she liked so much and hit the press every Tuesday with a special blanket that she asked for and went to the hospital. He entered the ward where she lay, and as he was to enter her room he met a nurse who told him that my grandmother had suffered a massive cardiac infarction and didn’t make it through.

She was about to turn 97 years old.

I’m skipping work right now. It’s just too much. I keep thinking about grandma’s loving smile, her kind words. Her quite repetitive words. Her wonderful words. The kind that amaze you, the kind that at times, when you’re having a bad day, make you think there’s something a lot better. Her calming way. Her way of holding me when I was little. How we threw my favourite stuffed animal – a monkey – until the fabric ripped and she mended it and off we went again, and I spent a lot of weekends at her apartment, only a concrete house away from my parents, where she lived for the last 30 years of her life. In the mornings she would make semolina porridge and toast. Her toast was always the best, and she made it using her old toaster that didn’t have an automatic function to pop up the toast when it was done.

She would always calm me with her vast life experience. She never thought herself better than anybody and always repeated herself. Towards the end of her life she mixed up names, which is about as nasty as she would get. Conclusion: if I’m anything like her when I’m past 60 I’ll consider myself having done something right.

In 2007 at my parents’ place

Upon meeting my grandmother for the last time we went through a lot of old pictures. She sat next to Mia and me, and we actually simmered through nearly all of her pictures. There were her brothers – dead since long; I never met any of them – and pictures of my grandmother’s mother. She looked stern and very much like my little sister, ha! And my grandmother’s father? He was there as well, looking paternal with a square jaw that shows where grandma got some of her from. She said he was firm and just. Somehow, I’ve always gathered he was quite hard but also loving.

The top picture is taken by Mia from when I last saw her, i.e. on Friday. Grandma felt quite bad when we first showed up but as we spoke and chattered on her health seemed to improve. It’s been like that for a long time. I know she felt quite alone, living by herself. Not that my parents are to blame; they did everything and all for grandma, and she just didn’t want to live in a home for the elderly. She wanted to “take care of herself”. But she couldn’t, not at the end of her life. Or rather, she wanted to live in the guest room in my parents’ apartment! I laugh, thinking of the face my mother used to make while my father chuckled at the prospect of that actually happening.

Her charisma was instant. She always made me feel at ease, as if she’d never say a bad word. Well, not about me anyway. She could excommunicate people for “talking rubbish about other people”. Actually, those were only people she genuinely disliked. And she always spoke lovingly about the ones she loved. Those were her ways through her days.

At the hospital in 2005.

Mia and I went to the hospital yesterday with my mother, father and sister. My sister cried. My wonderful little sister. Mia hurt. I hurt. We consoled each-other. I was lucky to have my love, my best friend with me. My mother was quite calm and matter-of-factly but as she herself said, the real effect will come later. I felt as if mom was in shock. I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when my parents pass. Grandma seldom left her apartment for a year and as such she’s been really sick, and even if I knew she wouldn’t live forever, this is truly amazing to me. I don’t know what to do. Time’s passing and thinking about her will probably do its bit but it just feels sick. Grandma’s always been there. And now she’s not. And I love her.

I can hear her bah-ing at the concept of her own funeral. She just wants to be placed to rest next to my mother – not that my mother’s dying any time soon. Just planning for the future, like grandma always was. Knowing that her humor out-lived her is something that probably would have made her laugh, and trust me, she’d constructed a funny joke about it as well.

I’ll always remember her smiling face, her great sense of humor, her loving ways and herself has always been beyond inspirational to me, and thus will she forever be, that and more so.

I love and miss you, grandma.

edit: Mia reminded me of this video, shot during her stint at the hospital in June 2008, where her great personality shines through: