Strong Women

I have been struggling to write this entry for a few days now.  So many emotions surface about these 2 women that I loved so well.  I find myself confused about where to start and don’t want to burden the reader with a book long post about my relatives.  How can a person (let alone 2) be summarized in a blog post?  How can I convey the essence of the most important woman in my life?  It can’t be done!  Instead I’ll simply share a story about my Mom and Grandma that exemplifies who they were in my eyes.

When I was little, Mom and I would go to GEMCO and I always got to have a pretzel (salted variety, with mustard, yum) as a treat.  The only condition was that I had to go to the counter and buy it myself.  This one simple act taught me how to stand up for myself ( a few times someone tried to push in front of me, but I corrected them; Mom said it was because I was a kid and people thought they could get away with it).  I’m convinced that once I was born, my Mom’s sole task in life was to make sure I was strong and would never be taken advantage of.  I would like to think that my Mom succeeded.  While my Mom was strong, and often confrontational, she was one of the silliest people that I knew, and while it may not have been one of her planned tasks, it rubbed off on me, and I’m so grateful for it.  Life seems pretty dull when you take yourself too seriously and forget to be simply silly.

My Grandma would be 90 years old this February.  She had a Pomeranian named Baby that she loved to bits.  One of her biggest frustrations about getting old was that her mobility was significantly reduced (she would tire easily and developed asthma).  When my Grandma started falling inexplicably last year, she didn’t tell me about it.  Apparently, my Grandma believed that you didn’t deliver bad news to a pregnant woman.  During one of her falls, my Grandma broke a glass table that had been beside her couch for at least 10 years.  When the health assessment nurse came to evaluate Grandma’s living situation, they strongly recommended that Grandma get rid of that table and also stop walking Baby (as with most undisciplined dogs, he was fond of wrapping my Grandma up in his leash).  The following day, my Grandma had someone fish that table out of the trash can and asked everyone she knew who put it in there in the 1^st place because she was going to give them a piece of her mind.  She also insisted on continuing to walk that damn dog, and he tripped her.  She broke her hip, but because of her age and ailing heart, they couldn’t operate, so she was sent to a nursing home for physical therapy.  What she got instead was pneumonia in both lungs.  I flew back home on a Friday, brought Grandma home on Saturday at her request, and she went into a coma that night.  She never regained consciousness and passed away almost a week later.  My Grandma was stubborn (and bossy, but we won’t discuss that now), and frustrating because of it!  But no one can say that she didn’t live and die on her own terms, and I respect and appreciate that.

Strong…stubborn…silly…these are all words that I would use to describe myself, and I’m proud to be all three of those.  I didn’t take the opportunity enough, if at all, to tell my Mom and Grandma that I appreciated those qualities about them.  It is true that we don’t appreciate something until we no longer have it.  I actively work to try and remedy that now…sometimes I fail, sometimes I succeed, but I’m always trying.