82. Pretty in Pink
I’m going to jump right in with a few reminders. In Blog 17, Worst Weekend of My Life, I wrote:
Last Friday kicked off a banner weekend of information gathering, option weighing, decision making and unmaking and remaking. It ended with heart wrenching grief … Hannah, Jessica and Hadley came for dinner and after we’d eaten, we played a Christmas game we enjoy. We put A-Z letters into a brown paper bag and took turns drawing a letter. Then we set about naming some Christmas-related thing that corresponds with that letter. (BTW, if you ever play and get the letter U, use the word unwrap).
Anyway, after the second game, I sat my sweet, loving granddaughter down and told her the news. The hopeful look on her face that she might have misheard, the tears that filled her eyes and ran like rain when she realized she hadn’t, and the hug that lasted an eternity broke my heart. I’m sure the pain of it all will last an eternity, for Hadley. Oh how I wish I could hug her pain away.
That was the weekend I told Hadley that I am going to die. It was quite some time before we spoke on the subject again. In Blog 27, Playing Games Isn’t Always Fun, I wrote:
Ever since I told my granddaughter the news, I’ve been waiting for her to broach the subject with me, and I’ve been asking Hannah if there have been any discussions at their house about the whole dying thing.
“The night you told her, she slept with me. She cried herself to sleep, woke up a few hours later and did the same thing, woke up a few hours later and said, ‘I don’t get it Mommy, she doesn’t even have white hair yet’. That’s it. She hasn’t said anything else, but she’s been clingy and it takes a long time for her to fall asleep.”
I was beginning to worry that the little kid was pushing things too deep, so I asked Hannah if it’d be alright to broach the subject again, if the opportunity presented itself. She thought I should, so on New Year’s Day while Hadley was kicking my ass at a game of Snaps, I did some broaching. “Hey Hads.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you given any thought to what I told you?”
She looked up at me with immediate wet eyes and said, “That’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
A push of breath left me with my next words, “Oh, honey, are you really thinking about it all the time?”
“Mostly at night. I hear the words you said that night over and over and over again.”
Another push of breath and a sentence caught on a bit of emotion, “That must be upsetting.”
She nodded.
“What do you do, you know, to help soothe yourself?”
“Sometimes I call out to Mommy and crawl into her bed, but last night I hugged the monkey you gave me for Christmas, the one that has your voice saying our goodnight prayer. I pushed the button over and over and over again,” she said with big, plopping tears escaping from her beautiful blue eyes.
“Did that make you feel better?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Can we get back to the game, now?”
“Absolutely.”
“Looks like I’m gonna win again.”
“Undoubtedly.”
She won three games in a row.
And. Then. This. Happened.
“MammyGrams. Can you tell me about the life cycle?”
“Uh ……. Sure ……. I guess ……. Sure.”
A bit of silence. An immediate sweat formed on my brow, and my hands showed a shake so I pushed them under my thighs. “So, you know how in spring trees bud, and flowers bud, and the grass starts to grow?”
“Not Gee’s grass,” she laughed.
I joined her in a chuckle then got back to the life cycle. “The newness of springtime is like the newness of a person’s life. Leaves and flowers bud and new baby animals and birds are born, and just like baby humans everything grows big and strong so that they’re ready for summer, the really fun season. During this stage of the life cycle, buds turn to big leaves that fill branches, and flowers bloom and spread all along the stonewall.”
“And in my fairy garden.”
“Yes, you have a beautiful garden.”
And then she asked about fall. I swallowed the lump of anxiety in my throat, then pushed in. “Oh, fall is a really wonderful season and it can be a really long season. I love the fall, it’s my most favorite time of year. In New England, it’s the most colorful season with big orange pumpkins, and really tall Sunflowers, and trees full of red apples, and the really tall oak, elm, and maple tree branches burst with yellow, orange, and red leaves.”
“Is fall a good part of the life cycle for people?”
“Oh, I think so. In people’s lives it’s when they have everything they want in life.”
“Like grandkids?”
“Like grandkids.”
There was a bit of silence for which I was very grateful.
And. Then. This. Happened.
“You’re near winter. And that’s when things die.”
I nodded. She teared and walked toward me. I thought she was going to throw her arms around me as she’d been doing so often lately, but she sat on the floor near my legs and just leaned against them. A minute or so passed before she buried her head onto her knees. I sat near and patted her head while she sobbed. I wanted to go back in time and not broach the subject, or encourage her to play another game, but I knew she needed to break a little.
There were a few more small conversations, each one brought with it big, floppy tears that moved silently down her rosy cheeks and onto the front of her shirt.
For months, I’d been getting hugs from Hadley and others in my family, whilst my ass was pressed to my recliner. Each sort-of-embrace was lovely, but I craved a real hug — the kind I got from Don and Denise when they left my home to head back to Georgia at Christmas. It was a standup hug, a light wrap of arms and a soft body bump and hold. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner, but in Blog 60, Mashup, I wrote:
I was expecting a visit from my mother and sister, and I had decided that I was going to get up from my recliner and hug them. Hadley and Hannah were here when I told them what I was going to do, but they weren’t here during the visit. First thing Hannah asked at supper that night was whether I got the chance to hug Grammy and Marjorie.
“Yes. When they got ready to leave, I got up and stepped into my walker. I asked each one to come as close as possible on the other side and then we hugged.” I was choked with emotion when I finished telling her.
“Oh, Mom. I’m so glad.”
The next morning I was heading into the bathroom to brush my teeth and I stopped in the doorway to wave to Hadley who was sitting at my kitchen table having breakfast. When I came out of the bathroom and stopped to do another wave, Hadley was gone. I called out. “Is Hadley done with breakfast? Did Hadley leave?” When I rounded into the living room. Hadley was standing where I usually park my walker.
“Nope. I’m here, MammyGrams, waiting for a hug.” She waited expectantly until I stepped into my walker. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. Then she pressed her face to my chest and held on. It filled my heart with joy.
When she stepped back she had a huge smile on her face and a tear or two in her eyes. “I can come over for a hug anytime you get up, MammyGrams. Just call.”
“You’re right. You can.”
And so I call. And so she comes. And then we hug.
And. Then. This. Happened.
Hannah was stepping through my front door. “I only have a minute. Hadley’s doing ST Math. So this happened, they were learning about philosophy and philosophers in class and at the end of the lecture they were told to take a few minutes to wonder about something and then write it down.”
I groaned. I grunted. I knew what was coming.
“Hadley said she got tears in her eyes because she wondered if the cancer boo-boo in MammyGrams was getting bigger and how much time there was before.”
My heart broke.
My daughter’s heart, already heavy with sadness for her little girl, broke. Rarely seen tears found their way southward.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“That it was okay to feel sad and that I’m really glad she told me, and that you and she could have a heart-to-heart whenever she was ready.”
I sighed, just a little bit. “You know, Hannah, you could have that heart-to-heart with her.”
“Nope. Don’t think I could.” And off she went, out the door, with a guilty little wave sent my way.
I don’t blame Hannah for passing the buck. That’s the way I conditioned her, and Jessica, and Tim, and now Hadley. I am their touchstone. The one who isn’t afraid of having difficult conversations, the one who takes information in, spins it a bit, then offers an opinion or an assessment or advice or whatever it is that is warranted.
And finally this happened.
I was heading back to my recliner Friday morning, and as expected I found Hadley standing where I usually park my walker waiting for her standup hug. My legs were very swollen and painful that morning. My granddaughter picked right up on it.
“MammyGrams, do your legs hurt?”
“They sure do, but I’m on medicine to help with the pain, so it’s all good.”
“Do you think your legs will die first?”
A chuckle sort of escaped me, “Nope, everything will die together.” I watched her face and eyes for a reaction. Zero. Zip. Nada.
“You know that thing Mommy put on your finger once. The thing that let her know you were still breathing.”
A chuckle sort of escaped me. “Uh huh.”
“When you die, it will be a zero, right? You won’t be breathing, right?”
“That’s right.”
She hopped onto the leather loveseat, turned on her iPad and pulled up ABC.com. With total predictability, she went to the library and listened to a few Aesop’s Fables. I don’t know what her fascination is with them, but she is all-in on those tales. Tim once said that my little life lessons sound like fables. You’re probably wondering if my talky-talk stories sound like childrens’ books — I’m still wondering how Mr. Wonderful came up with that comparative gem!
When The Boy Who Cried Wolf finished, Hadley called Gee into the living room. She told him to sit on his recliner. “Gee. I’m having a half-sleepover with MammyGrams tomorrow.”
“I heard,” he said.
“You need to learn how to do sleepovers.” Silence. She filled the silence which was a very good thing because Tim and I were speechless. “When MammyGrams is gone, you and Auntie J will have to do the sleepovers.”
He nodded.
She continued. “Tomorrow night’s theme is pink, so everything needs to be pink. I already picked out my pajamas, and I put all of my pink stuffies into a basket. You have to do everything else. Pink food. Pink drinks. Pink party favors. Whatever you do, it has to be pink.”
She got up, gave each of us a hug and went off to school.
Pretty in Pink
Hadley arrived in her pink pajamas and carrying her basket of pink stuffies. I was wearing a pink nightgown, and Tim had on a gray tee that had a faint pink line through it. He handed off a single pink carnation, and took hold of her belongings.
She smiled big, and said, “So far, so good, Gee.”
He stopped her from kicking off her pink rain boots, “Keep them on, we need to go to the car.”
“Why?”
“I have a surprise.”
Off they went, holding hands, her head turning upwards along the way — I suppose she was asking about the surprise that awaited her. He stopped her at the front door of the RAV, turned her so her back was against it. Her hands raised up over her eyes and then one reached out. He pulled a pastel pink balloon from the backseat, wrapped a long ribbon around her hand, and told her to look.
She looked. She squealed. She hugged her Gee.
Hadley played outside with the balloon and when she came in she declared, “Gee is doing really good, MammyGrams!”
“There’s more,” he chimed in. He took hold of her unribboned hand and led her to the kitchen. He let her make the discoveries.
“Pink jello. Pink cake mix. Pink sprinkles. White frosting?” Her disappointment was very evident.
“That’s all they had.”
“No problem, Gee, we’ll just add red food coloring.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Go wash your hands so we can bake the cupcakes.”
Tim poked his head into the living room, “How are you doing?”
“I’m good. This is good. She is good.”
I took a backseat during that half-sleepover. That pun was intended, by the way. When she snuggled on the loveseat and surrounded herself with pink stuffies, I snapped a picture on my phone. I asked Hannah to print it out and frame it so Hadley can give it to her grandfather for Father’s Day.