In this post I want to tell you some more about my grandma. I’ve mentioned her a few times in other posts, but she really deserves her own post.
My earliest memory of my grandma is her babysitting me, because my mom was hospitalized and my dad was working. She put me to bed and sang nursery rhymes. I love my grandma’s nursery rhymes, I still know how to sing them and I often sing them to the kids I work with. I don’t think I know anyone else who knows these songs, apart from my sister.
As I’ve said before, I loved visiting my grandma. When my grandpa was still around, we often did boardgames with the three of us. My grandpa always did this thing with the dice that I really liked. He put the dice in both his hands and made some kind of ball with his hands and then he blew on the dice for luck. My grandma always rolled her eyes when my grandpa did that. But after my grandpa passed away, she started doing it too. I really loved that.
My grandpa passed away when I was five years old. I didn’t really understand death at the time. So when they asked me if I wanted to see him one last time when he was at the funeral home, I said no. I was playing soccer with my brother and other people and I had no idea that ‘last time’ really meant ‘last time’. I feel awful about that and regret it so much. But unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it.
When my grandpa wasn’t around anymore, my grandma still had a very active life. She had a sewing group she went to once a week, she did grocery shopping on her bike, she went to the library, visited friends and friends were visiting her. At some point she started to have hip problems, so doing all these things every week wasn’t possible anymore. I remember my grandma had to undergo hip replacement surgery. She told me something went wrong with the anesthesia: She wasn’t anesthetized properly and when they started the sawing, she felt it. Fortunately she could make them notice it, so they stopped pretty quickly. But it was still an awful experience. The surgery helped a little. My grandma seemed to be in less pain. But it didn’t make everything right. She couldn’t do all the things she did before. She stopped riding her bike and had to use a walking cane at some point. My grandma got more housebound, but that didn’t make her isolated. She still had a lot of visits from friends and she still went to others sometimes. Once a week she went to my aunt to have dinner there.
With my grandma I felt safe. I didn’t really feel that at home. It was a certainty that nothing was going to happen at my grandma’s. I guess that was one of the main reasons I wanted to go there that often.
As I’ve mentioned briefly before, I hated New Year’s Eve in my neighbourhood. It was scary and vile and there was always riot police. So I always celebrated New Year’s Eve at my grandma’s house. My dad brought me there early in the morning and I stayed there till the next day. During the day we made snacks for the evening, watched tv and we did boardgames or played cards. As much as I hated New Year’s Eve (and I still do), I loved the way we celebrated it at my grandma. I put on my pajama’s early in the evening and we watched all these comedy and music shows together. My aunt brought homemade apple beignets, my dad brought store-bought freshly baked ‘Oliebollen’ (deep fried dough balls). After dinnertime family and friends would come over at separate times and watch tv with us, talk and eat snacks. At 12 o’clock my mom, dad, sister and brother were there to wish everyone a happy new year. My dad, brother and sister would light fireworks and I would watch it. Inside. Safely behind glass. With my hands covering my ears, because the loud bangs scared me. After an hour or two, my dad, mom and brother would leave and my sister and I would sleep in the guest room. The next morning we drank tea and ate Dutch rusks with chocolate sprinkles and the rest of the day we ate leftover snacks.
A lot of things changed when we moved into the emergency shelter. I didn’t visit my grandma that much anymore. I still saw her once a week, but that was a lot less than before. She started having memory problems and I couldn’t really deal with that. It annoyed me. My grandma was supposed to be predictable and safe and the memory loss kinda ruined that. I still liked my grandma, but I got into more conflicts with her. It probably also had something to do with me being in puberty. I knew it wasn’t her fault at all, but I still blamed her for constantly repeating everything. She started calling us a lot, asking the same questions over and over again. After my aunt passed away it became even worse. She had moments when she forgot about the passing of my aunt. She would call my mom and ask about my aunt: ‘Why isn’t she answering her phone?’. She would have the funeral card in her top drawer near the telephone and would call my mom in tears: ‘When did this happen? I didn’t know’. And this wasn’t just a couple of times. No, sometimes it was more than 20 times a day. And my mom didn’t even pick up the phone all the time.
I remember us (my mom, my dad and me) going to Rock Werchter Festival together and my grandma constantly calling my mom. My mom put her phone on silent and when she would look after three hours, she would have 99+ missed phone calls. My mom wanted to charge her phone, but she couldn’t cause the ringing of the phone cost more energy than the battery could charge it with. My mom had a custom ringtone for my grandma and I can still recall that ringtone so vividly.
At some point my grandma’s health was getting worse. She would bump into things and have massive bruises or huge swellings. She became incontinent and had accidents. Sometimes she would fall and she wouldn’t be able to get up. There had been a few incidents where my grandma fell, couldn’t get up and laid on the floor for hours. My grandma forgot about the food she had on the stove a lot. Because of this and her incontinence, the house started to smell like burnt food and urine. Everybody wanted her to go into a nursing home, but my grandma absolutely didn’t want that, so she didn’t.
One day my grandma fell on the floor again. This time she had to be admitted into the hospital. In the hospital she could still remember us most of the time, but she wasn’t really present generally. It didn’t seem they were really trying to get her better at the hospital. Her health was declining and it was more like the hospital was a saver place than home to spent her last days. I remember my grandma having really dry lips. They were stuck together and nurses didn’t rub them with balm or water or whatever. So I did that and it really annoyed me that the nurses didn’t do it. At some point the hospital needed the hospital bed, because apparently it took too long. So my grandma was moving into a nursing home. A few hours after her arrival, she took her last breath.
It was okay. She was done living her life. Of course I was sad and of course I still miss her. But I don’t think she would’ve wanted to live like this any longer. She always said she wouldn’t reach the age of 81 and she didn’t . She passed away before her 81st birthday. My grandma was like a mother to me. She gave me the safety I desperately needed when I was a kid and I am so grateful to have had a grandma like her.
